Alternative reinsurance capital

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 16th September 2018, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics. To ensure you never miss a thing subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates or get our email alerts for every article we publish.

Global catastrophe loss data aggregator, Property Claim Services (PCS), is “excited” at the prospect of its county-level industry loss data for all 50 U.S. states going live in early 2019, an enhancement that could make industry loss triggers more sensitive to losses at a county level.

The reinsurance cycle will continue, but future peaks and troughs will increasingly be shaped by capital market appetite for insurance risk, thinks Lixin Zeng, chief executive of AlphaCat Managers Ltd.

As the reinsurance industry begins its discussions on the prospects for January 2019 renewals buyers are pushing for rate reductions in lines of business that have been performing, but a fully soft market is not a foregone conclusion.

One of the big surprises in the reinsurance sector following the level of catastrophe losses in 2017 was the reloading and expansion of alternative, or third-party reinsurance capital, according to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SCOR, Denis Kessler.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market has become “an established force” in the natural catastrophe underwriting markets, but Christian Mumenthaler, the CEO of reinsurance firm Swiss Re, questions whether ILS markets are operating in sustainable territory.

Brian Duperreault, the CEO of insurance giant AIG, discussed the state of his company, the progress he is making in his mission to turn it around and the market forces seen today, in a speech in Monte Carlo yesterday.

The market should expect more mergers and acquisitions (M&) activity surrounding ILS funds or entities as re/insurers look to harness the capital markets, while at the same time efforts to bring the capital markets further along the value-chain are seen as “intelligent”, according to Aon executives.

At this time of year, as peak-conference season begins, the market tends to reflect on conditions and the drivers setting up dynamics for year-end and beyond.

For insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund investors who faced their heaviest losses ever in 2017 (said up to $18bn this morning), another loss impacted year, even if breakeven, could be sufficient to cause them to call for better returns.