Catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities news

As we wrote last Friday in this article on the subject, Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance plans to increase its spending on private market reinsurance and risk transfer in 2013, upping the amount of cover it will look to acquire by almost 17%. It has been expected that Citizens would look to the capital markets again […]

The issuance market for catastrophe bonds continues to be quiet but, as we understand it, we hope to see some action before the end of the month as a number of deals are currently being firmed up prior to marketing. As always, you can read every market news story and article on the Artemis news […]

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance, the property insurer of last resort in the hurricane prone sunshine state, is to increase its spending on private market reinsurance and risk transfer in 2013, upping the amount of cover it will look to acquire by almost 17%. 2012 was a landmark year for Citizens and the Florida insurance market […]

In an article published yesterday on its BestWire service, rating agency A.M. Best discussed the maturation of the catastrophe bond market, citing the near record levels of issuance in 2012 as evidence of a rapidly maturing market. While the market may be maturing, A.M. Best agree with our position that the market needs to find […]

2012 saw rollercoaster-like conditions for secondary catastrophe bond trading as the market saw ups and downs over the course of what was a very good year for primary cat bond issuance. With primary cat bond issuance high and capital readily available to put to work in new transactions at the start of the year, the […]

Lower than expected issuance levels of new catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities so far this year has made secondary cat bond trading opportunities elusive, according to one ILS fund manager. Investment managers are currently awash with excess cash, thanks to new capital inflows and money returned from maturing cat bonds. But this excess cash could […]

We’ve covered the recently completed Skyline Re Ltd. (Series 2013-1) private catastrophe bond placement in some detail in our original article announcing the transaction and a follow-up where we talked at some length with Towers Watson Capital Markets (TWCM) about its role in structuring and placing the cat bond. However to date we had not […]

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance, the property insurer of last resort in the sunshine state, has been on a mission to reduce its exposures to ensure its claims paying ability is retained. This has involved a lot of discussion on the potential ‘depopulation’ of Citizens, or offloading of policies and customers to private insurers, and now […]

Collateral arrangements in catastrophe bond deals, not a subject we touch on particularly often, but something worth revisiting now that the long forecast death of the total return swap as collateral solution is almost upon us. When we last covered the total return swaps demise back in December 2011, it accounted for approximately 12% of […]

U.S. insurer Travelers 2009 catastrophe bond issuance Longpoint Re II Ltd. was one of the transactions which saw changes to its risk profile when it was remodelled using the latest version of the RMS hurricane risk model (V. 11) at its annual reset. At the time Travelers said that it suspected the attachment point may […]