Covid-19 news

The property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry loss from Covid-19 pandemic related claims is estimated in a range from $40 billion to as high as $80 billion by analysts at Dowling & Partners.

Chubb, the U.S. and global primary insurance carrier and reinsurance company, is classifying the Covid-19 pandemic as a catastrophe loss event and expects it to have a meaningful impact on earnings in the second-quarter.

Beazley, the specialist Lloyd’s focused insurance and reinsurance underwriting business, has revealed an expected Covid-19 claims burden of $170 million net of reinsurance across its business. We would expect some of that loss to be shared with investors backing the companies third-party capital arrangements.

Germany headquartered reinsurance firm Hannover Re has withdrawn its profit guidance for 2020 due to the uncertainty over claims from the Covid-19 pandemic and the capital market environment.

A number of insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund managers have proactively marked-down some collateralised reinsurance positions, seeing a risk of potential exposure and perhaps even some losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that the Covid-19 pandemic constitutes a “natural disaster” potentially setting an unwelcome precedent for some in reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS).

Reinsurance companies need to focus on capital preservation in order to offset the impacts in terms of losses and investment declines from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to S&P Global Ratings.

A steering group has been formed by UK insurance and reinsurance industry leaders with Stephen Catlin of Convex as Chair, to work with UK government backed mutual terrorism reinsurance firm Pool Re to strengthen the industry’s response to future pandemics.

The majority of analysts and observers do not believe that the reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) industry faces a tidal wave of business interruption claims as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Bank issued pandemic catastrophe bonds and pandemic risk-linked swaps have now been triggered and will pay out $195.84m, we’ve learned today, after the final trigger parameter of the growth-rate of coronavirus cases turned positive.