Catastrophe bond news

The so-called “live cat” market has come to life, albeit perhaps tentatively, as hurricane Matthew’s approach towards the U.S. has increased the certainty of what looks set to be a relatively major impact (at this time) with a number of ILW’s trading and as much as $100m of limit placed, Artemis understands.

At this time the catastrophe bond market has not shown a significant reaction to the slow approach of hurricane Matthew towards the U.S. coastline, despite the fact that the forecast path has been shifting steadily nearer to Florida with each NOAA update and now a hurricane watch has been announced.

AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM), the global asset management unit of AXA Group, has consolidated its alternative investment and structured solutions teams into a single global alternative credit platform, which includes its insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment team.

The importance of robust administration, oversight and valuation of insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds, particularly those investing in hard-to-value private ILS transactions, cannot be overstated, according to Horseshoe Group and IKONIC.

The launch of Oortfolio™, a liability insurance risk modeling platform from Praedicat, could stimulate innovation in liability insurance risk transfer, such as attracting new capital by enabling it to better quantify liability exposures and even liability catastrophe bonds.

The cat bond market must continue to offer sponsors and investors new structures and risks in a bid to remain relevant and competitive, thinks Cory Anger, Global Head of ILS Structuring, GC Securities.

Sara Rejal has been promoted to a newly created role of Head of Liquid Alternatives, in the investment consultancy and advisory business of Willis Towers Watson, a role that will see her take on reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment consultancy responsibility.

Property Claim Services (PCS) has designated its first two catastrophe events under its PCS Turkey catastrophe loss aggregation and industry loss estimation service, with both events being terrorism insurance related.

Aon Securities has appointed Darren Bailey as Head of Capital Markets (Capital Markets Team – Aon Securities) in the firm’s London office, as it rebuilds its European-based insurance-linked securities (ILS) focused team in the wake of two departures.

Our latest report on activity in the catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market has now been published. The report, ‘Q3 2016 Catastrophe Bond & ILS Market Report – Weather risk returns, private deals, market growth‘, analyses a third-quarter featuring $1.087 billion of issuance.