Thanks to the sophistication of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market and investors demonstrated resilience over recent loss-heavy years, analysts at KBW conclude that even huge catastrophe events won’t drive a capacity shortfall in reinsurance any more.

Research from Ceres, the non-profit focused on sustainability challenges such as global climate change and water scarcity and their implications, has found that major US banks have more than $250 billion of exposure to physical climate risks annually sitting in their loan portfolios.

The Progressive Corporation has reported that its excess-of-loss reinsurance program will reduce its gross exposure to hurricane Ida, a catastrophe event that the insurer says has driven reported and IBNR losses of $510 million in the aggregate across the US Gulf Coast and Northeast.

The market for longevity swaps has outpaced the use of bulk annuities, when it comes to pension risk transfer deals, through the first-half of 2021 and the second-half could also be busy as there is spare capacity in the market to be used, broker Aon notes.

A hurricane Ida industry loss estimate update from RMS has put the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) reinsurance counterparties and catastrophe bond investors on-watch for potential losses, as the estimate suggests the traditional reinsurance component at-least is likely to attach and face losses.

The retrocessional reinsurance investment portfolio constructed by Markel’s CATCo Investment Management is continuing to develop more favourably than had originally been expected, with the firm reporting a reduction of claims in relation to catastrophe events from 2017.

Catastrophe risk modelling firm RMS has now added a further $6 billion to $9 billion of insurance and reinsurance market losses to its industry estimate for recent hurricane Ida, adding the expected flood toll further north and taking the total estimate range to $31 billion to $44 billion.

The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) increased the size of its reinsurance and catastrophe bond risk transfer program by around 4.4% as of the end of July 2021, to reach almost $9.6 billion, but in the short-term future growth of the program seems less certain due to rising exposure and the cost of coverage.