Cat bond news

The introduction of the impending Solvency II insurance and reinsurance regulatory environment is likely to be a “major development” for the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, according to a representative of EIOPA.

The steep decline in rates and pricing for Florida wind property catastrophe reinsurance coverage can be plainly seen in information published by the states Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. Also published are the extent of the savings the insurer made in 2015.

The recent stabilisation of pricing in the catastrophe bond issuance market is a positive signal for the broader catastrophe reinsurance market, suggesting that technical levels have been reached and capital providers will go no lower, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley.

For casualty risks to become a meaningful part of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bond market, transactions need to be structured in such a way that investors can see a clear exit point, according to Chris Parry of Aon Securities Limited.

A new academic empirical study, undertaken by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, concludes that the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market can be expected to double in size over the coming five years.

Alternative reinsurance capital is helping to make reinsurance “more efficient and fair” by targeting pricing of peak perils and bringing costs down in regions that have perhaps been inflated, according to Nelson Seo of Fermat Capital.

Insurance and reinsurance remained at the heart of recent discussions on disaster and climate risk reduction and resilience efforts at the United Nations, with regulatory reform highlighted as required to make risk transfer more available.

The secondary catastrophe bond market saw further pressure on prices in May, resulting in opportunities for bond pickers during the month, as some names could be picked up at reasonable, below par pricing.

The pace of issuance of new catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) continues to be seen as a risk to some asset and fund managers, who see the reinsurance asset class as an attractive complement to their portfolios but worry about issuance volume.

Catastrophe risk modeling company AIR Worldwide has released Version 3.0 of its catastrophe modeling platform, Touchstone®, today. The new version brings some new features to the platform that allows insurance and reinsurance users to develop their own view of risk.