Collateralized reinsurance news

Florida’s lawmakers continue to progress new legislation that they hope will stabilise the states dysfunctional property insurance market, with the package of bills now passing the Senate and heading to the House today.

Florida’s insurance carriers face one problem above all others, the fact that they are over-litigated and being badly affected by a litigious property insurance claims environment where fraud has been de rigueur.

Florida’s Legislature made progress on some of the property insurance reform bills that were heard by a committee yesterday, moving them on to the Senate, but the details underlying the reforms will matter for the reinsurance market and the prospects of meaningful change.

Driving home the seriousness of the situation in Florida’s property insurance market today, the sponsor of one of the bills being discussed at the special legislative session in Tallahassee said on the floor that some carriers in the state are “on life support.”

Industry contacts have been raising concerns over the weekend, that proposed property insurance related legislation set to be raised during Florida’s special session of the legislature this week will not go far enough on litigation and won’t do enough to bring reinsurance market confidence back to the state.

The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) has now set the target size for its new catastrophe bond at $185 million, while pricing guidance for the Alamo Re Ltd. (Series 2022-1) cat bond has narrowed towards the upper-end of the range.

Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation had originally been seeking more catastrophe bond backed reinsurance for 2022, specifically to fill out layers of its Coastal Account reinsurance tower, but pricing feedback from investors caused the insurer to change plans and these cat bond tranches never made it to market.

The CFO of Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation said today that the reinsurance risk transfer markets are in “disarray”, meaning the insurer won’t be able to buy its targeted program within budget with the June renewals fast-approaching.

For 2022, the staff of Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation are seeking approval to buy roughly $3.64 billion of new risk transfer, across traditional reinsurance and catastrophe bonds, which added to still in-force cat bonds from prior years will take the Citizens program to roughly $4.7 billion for the coming hurricane season.

Ocorian, a global provider of corporate and fiduciary services, fund administration and capital markets with operations focused on the insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance space, has hired Ashish Prabhakar to lead business development in capital markets activities across the United States.