casualty

The casualty reinsurance market is becoming more competitive and one of the main reasons is the flow of new capital, including third-party or alternative reinsurance capital, into property reinsurance, which is pushing reinsurers to look elsewhere for profits.

The impact of third-party capital, from capital market investors, on the reinsurance market has largely been contained to property catastrophe risks to date, but its influence has widened and its impact on the casualty reinsurance market is growing.

Overall the global insurance market continues to be well capitalised and generally competitive despite the major catastrophe losses experienced this year says insurance broker Marsh in their Second Quarter 2011 Insurance Market Update which was published yesterday.

Net underwriting losses for U.S. property/casualty insurers grew to $4.5 billion in Q1 2011 from $1.8 billion a year earlier as their combined ratio deteriorated to 103.3% according to figures from the ISO and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI).

Yesterday we wrote about the launch of the ISO Casualty IndexTM by the Insurance Services Office. This could be an important piece of the evolution of the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities markets that helps the markets broaden their scope to include casualty lines of insurance business.

The Insurance Services Office (ISO), a member of the Verisk group of companies and the provider of the PCS Catastrophe Loss Index which is used in many catastrophe bond deals, has today launched a new index product aiming to target the casualty insurance market. ISO Casualty IndexTM is a new service which will provide loss […]