catastrophe

The United Nations continues to move forwards, albeit slowly, its goal to address the issue of “loss and damages” from natural disasters and weather related climate risks, and catastrophe bonds, alongside other risk transfer tools, are set to feature.

Phoenix CRetro, a niche Bermudian collateralized retrocessional reinsurance firm, has assisted Ukrainian insurance firm BROKBUSINESS in becoming the first CEE based re/insurer with a license to post reinsurance collateral abroad.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s highlights the opportunity for insurance, reinsurance and the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market to work with governments to provide and support sovereign catastrophe and disaster risk financing tools.

Reinsurance firm Swiss Re’s sigma has estimated that the first-half of 2014 resulted in around $44 billion of economic losses and $21 billion of insured losses from natural catastrophe and man-made disaster events.

An Aon Benfield report shows that economic losses from global natural disasters for the first six months of 2014 totaled $54 billion, roughly 49% below the 10-year (2004-2013) average of $106 billion.

The frequency of catastrophe events recorded in the U.S. and Canada increased during the second-quarter of 2014, but resulting insurance industry losses remain slightly below average, according to Property Claim Services (PCS) Q2 2014 catastrophe report.

Demonstrating the need to increase financial protection against weather, climate and water related disasters, a new report from the WMO shows that between 1970 and 2012 the global economy suffered a huge $2.4 trillion of losses as a result of these events.

The influence of alternative forms of reinsurance capital are beginning to be felt much more broadly across both the insurance and reinsurance market, with one area of note being the market for power industry property insurance risks.

Companies should be required to report on and disclose their natural disaster risks as a standard procedure, according to leaders speaking at a United Nations summit hosted by the International Insurance Society (IIS) and organised by Willis Group in London today.

The growth rate of global non-life and life insurance premiums was slower in 2013, then the rate seen in 2012, but both are expected to strengthen during 2014, according to one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms Swiss Re.