Catastrophe bond news

After a bumper year of new Special Purpose Insurers (SPI) in 2013 saw 51 of the, largely ILS or collateralized reinsurance focused, vehicles registered, the 2014 annual total came in some way below with 28 new SPI’s.

Price guidance on French reinsurer SCOR’s latest $150m U.S. wind, U.S. and Canada earthquake catastrophe bond Atlas IX Capital Limited (Series 2015-1) has narrowed right at the low-end of initial guidance, according to sources.

Once again, every catastrophe bond trade recorded by FINRA’s TRACE system in the last week is at a lower price level than the cat bond’s previous trade. Fewer of the short-dated cat bonds traded, with more of a focus on higher-yield 2016 maturing bonds.

GIC Re (General Insurance Corporation), the national reinsurance company in India is exploring the use of insurance-linked securities (ILS), or catastrophe bond type structures, as a financial tool to create capacity for a proposed nuclear insurance pool.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 1st February 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.

With insurance-linked securities (ILS) and capital market participation in reinsurance expected to continue growing strongly the outlook for traditional reinsurers remains bleak, analysts at investment bank Credit Suisse explained in a research note today.

The Actuarial and Underwriting Committee of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) has just completed its latest meeting, at which the committee resolved to pursue a 2015 reinsurance renewal that can include a new Alamo Re catastrophe bond.

The catastrophe bond market has averaged a very impressive 8.33% on a compound annual growth rate basis since 2002, according to the Swiss Re Global Cat Bond Total Return Index, displaying significantly less volatility than other asset classes.

The ninth in this series of articles involving leading figures from the insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance arena on the prospects for the market in 2015 features Kevin Lee from Moody’s Investors Service.

Bermuda was selected as the domicile of choice for 57% of insurance-linked securities (ILS) during 2014, leading to nearly $16 billion of insurance-linked listings on the BSX, and now the island wants to capitalise on this position as leading ILS domicile.