Catastrophe bond news

U.S. primary insurance company Allstate launched its fourth Sanders catastrophe bond on Friday, seeking one of the longest coverages that the cat bond market has provided. The $130m Sanders Re Ltd. (Series 2015-1) is looking for a 7 year cover for multiple U.S. perils for the insurer.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 15th March 2015, 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.

The world is meeting in Sendai, Japan over the coming days to discuss disaster risk reduction and how the world becomes more resilient to them. Risk transfer and re/insurance remain vital components of any disaster risk reduction initiative.

U.S. insurer State Farm’s latest catastrophe bond, the $300m Merna Re Ltd. (Series 2015-1), is set to price at the top end of initial guidance Artemis understands, as investors again showed they are not prepared to take on a risk at any price.

For those in management tasked with risk analysis, risk strategy implementation and long-term views of risk, the probable maximum loss (PML) “is not a useful number,” stressed Karen Clark during a speech at the SIFMA event in the U.S. last week.

Florida takeout (or depopulation) insurer Safepoint Insurance Company is entering the catastrophe bond market for the first time to sponsor Manatee Re Ltd. (Series 2015-1), a $75m Florida named storm cat bond.

Activity in the secondary trading market for catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) was a little slower in February, partially due to lower primary cat bond issuance but also as the month is typically one of consolidation.

As the pace of change in the reinsurance market accelerates, there is an expectation that the amount of capital seeking direct access to insurance and reinsurance risks from third-party investors and institutions will more than double to $150 billion by 2020.

A dual-polarization, radar mapping system for hail has been made available to the insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) industry, delivered by Verisk Climate, through Verisk Insurance Solutions’ software suite, Benchmark.

German global reinsurance firm Hannover Re has embraced insurance-linked securities (ILS) and collateralized reinsurance in 2014, expanding its cooperation with a select group of ILS fund managers during the year.