Insurdata, an insurtech specialising in software and services to correct, create and augment peril-specific exposure and risk data for insurance and reinsurance carriers, has added the ex-Ventus co-founder Stuart Mercer to its Advisory Board.

U.S. primary insurer and global re/insurer Liberty Mutual has reported suffering an elevated level of catastrophe losses in the second-quarter, as U.S. severe weather affected the firm, as well as a $529 million loss from the Covid-19 pandemic, all of which sent the company to a loss for the period.

Two of the main hurricane forecasting teams that we track here at Artemis have both raised their seasonal forecast numbers for the 2020 Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane season significantly, with more than 10 hurricanes now expected to form.

Global reinsurance giant Munich Re turned a €579 million profit in the second-quarter of the year despite suffering around €700 million of losses from the Covid-19 pandemic during the period.

German reinsurance firm Hannover Re expects that as its losses from the Covid-19 pandemic convert from IBNR reserves to reported claims, a proportion of these will be ceded to third-party investors in its K-Cessions sidecar vehicle.

In the last quarter, Athene Holding Ltd., the life and retirement reinsurance company majority owned by investor and private equity specialist Apollo Global, earned an increased level of management fees from its Athene Co-Invest Reinsurance Affiliate (ACRA) sidecar vehicle.

Bermuda continued to see an increase in assets under management of investment funds located in the domicile in the first-quarter of 2020, while the number of private fund structures, a popular one in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space, continued to grow.

Global reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter has promoted Peter Askew to President and CEO of its Canadian operations, after Donald Callahan stepped down from the positions.

TransRe, the reinsurance arm of Alleghany Corporation, has reported a 75% increase in its loss reserves for the Covid-19 pandemic in the second-quarter of the year, with an estimated loading for expected international property business interruption claims a factor.

AIG is expecting its Covid-19 losses will trigger a reinsurance recovery under its international catastrophe treaty, while its losses are also mounting in the United States and have eaten half-way through its U.S. cat treaty retention, President and COO Peter Zaffino explained yesterday.

Reinsurance firm Hannover Re has more than doubled the size of its net reserve for losses from the Covid-19 pandemic, lifting it from €220 million at the end of Q1 to now €600 million for the first-half of 2020.

In a clear sign that the insurance and reinsurance market has moved beyond the “u-shape” that we saw earlier in the year, when primary and retrocession rates at either end were rising faster than reinsurance, now carriers are beginning to cite the harder reinsurance market as a reason to hike their front-end rates even further.