Insurance Linked Investments

Langhorne Re, the joint-venture, third-party capital backed life and annuity reinsurance firm launched by specialist reinsurer and capital manager Renaissance Re (RenRe) and life focused reinsurer Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), has appointed its first senior executives.

French insurance giant AXA now has access to new capital solutions to help it to optimise its business, with the reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) operations and access to the capital markets that come with its acquisition of XL Group offering a new lever for efficiency, according to CEO Thomas Buberl.

Catastrophe risk modelling specialist RMS has launched the first probabilistic cyber risk model, a product it believes will help insurance and reinsurance entities allocate capital to cyber risks more robustly and could be a step forward in the tools available for ILS fund managers looking seriously at cyber risk.

The UK’s government-backed mutual terrorism reinsurance facility Pool Re is actively exploring the issuance of an insurance-linked securities (ILS), or at least some collateralized reinsurance, using the recently set up UK ILS regulatory regime, as the mutual looks to expand its sources of terror retrocession to the capital markets.

Alternative reinsurance capital and traditional reinsurers are set to become increasingly interdependent, as the two forms of capacity identify synergies and better ways to work together, while reinsurers get more adept at matching risks with the most appropriate form of capital, according to Moody’s.

Secondary market catastrophe bond price recovery helped the average return of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance linked investment funds was 0.56% for January 2018, the highest January performance for a number of years, according to the ILS Advisers Index.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning for a potential mid-year 2018 reinsurance placement for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and is actively exploring ILS options, as it continues to commit to expanding the reinsurance program it began in 2017.

French insurance, investment and retirement solutions giant AXA has announced this morning that it will acquire Bermudian insurance and reinsurance specialist XL Group in a $15.3 billion deal, confirming the rumours that emerged over the last weekend.

Media reports today state that French insurance and investment giant AXA is in advanced talks to buy Bermudian insurance and reinsurance firm XL Group, a deal that could see two entities with related ILS investment fund operations coming together.

Gemini Re, LLC is a new insurance-linked securities (ILS) asset manager which is domiciled in Florida and plans to launch in time for the mid-year 2018 reinsurance renewals with between $500 million and $750 million of capacity to deploy, through a patent-pending product suite.