Catastrophe bond news

The Bank of England has written to “dozens” of insurance and reinsurance companies as it seeks to better understand the risk that climate change poses to their solvency and earnings, according to the FT.

Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (WCMA), the catastrophe bond, insurance-linked securities (ILS), M&A and investment banking unit of global insurance and reinsurance broker Willis, has launched a platform to simplify client access to catastrophe bond capacity.

Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 26th October 2014, on catastrophe bonds, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics, from the last seven days on Artemis. To ensure you never miss a thing  subscribe to the weekly Artemis email newsletter updates.

Global reinsurance firm Everest Re’s Mt. Logan Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar and the use of instruments such as catastrophe bonds and ILW’s are helping the reinsurer to reduce its cost-of-capital and position itself for growth and profitability.

A new climate risk report produced by Ceres reveals that an alarmingly low level of insurers and reinsurers are moving in positive ways to tackle the increasing threat of climate change risks and that more needs to be done.

Initial model runs suggest that Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) member countries affected by tropical storm and hurricane Gonzalo will not receive a payout, which also means the World Bank – CCRIF 2014-1 catastrophe bond will be safe.

German reinsurance firm Hannover Re has used its Bermuda domiciled segregated accounts company Kaith Re Ltd., which acts as a type of collateralized quota share sidecar for the reinsurer, to issue a new $10.37m securitization named LI Re (Series 2014-1).

The world’s largest reinsurance firm Munich Re believes that pricing for catastrophe bonds and insurance-linked securities (ILS) has stabilised at 2013 levels and expects it to remain broadly at current levels for the foreseeable future.

The expected excess return, or the return available between average expected losses and the average yield spread, of outstanding catastrophe bonds has shrunk to its lowest level since ILS consultancy Lane Financial LLC began tracking the number.

According to Reuters, French insurance group AXA is marketing a new 144A mortality catastrophe bond transaction, as it seeks to secure capital markets reinsurance protection for large increases in mortality experience under its life insurance portfolio.