Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund

The Florida legislative season is upon us and moves to enable greater private reinsurance market participation and shrink Florida’s reliance on state backed catastrophe insurance and reinsurance facilities continue to make progress.

At an insurance summit held yesterday in Orlando, Jack Nicholson the COO of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund said that it is seeking approval to buy up to $1.5 billion of private reinsurance, and favors using catastrophe bonds and collateralized reinsurance.

This year saw the groundbreaking issuance of the largest catastrophe bond to ever by first time sponsor Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance. The $750m cat bond Everglades Re Ltd. provides Citizens with a source of collateralized reinsurance cover for a portion of their coastal account, their peak risk zones along the Florida coastline. Not only was this […]

At least once every year the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund hits the headlines as people discuss the lack of financing the fund has to cope with an extremely severe Atlantic hurricane season. In 2012 this hasn’t changed, its’ still thought that the cat fund could only cope with two reasonably sized landfalling hurricanes and if […]

Citizens Property Insurance, the state backed property insurer of last resort in Florida, who recently completed the largest catastrophe bond ever with the $750m Everglades Re Ltd., is planning to double the total amount of private market risk transfer purchased this year to $1.5 billion. Earlier this year we reported that Citizens would seek $750m […]

Citizens Property Insurance, the state backed property insurer of last resort in Florida, is planning to increase its use of the private reinsurance markets in 2012 by increasing the amount of reinsurance cover it purchases and also issuing what we believe would be their first catastrophe bond.

We wrote earlier this year about the need to shrink the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and allow the private reinsurance and risk transfer markets to step in to provide cover where the Fund is now struggling. The Fund faces a large shortfall should any major hurricane strike the State of Florida and likely couldn’t manage […]

Once again the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund has hit the news after new concerns were raised about the Funds ability to pay claims should a major hurricane strike. The 2011 hurricane season has been kind to Florida so far and it looks like the fund may get away without having to pay for a major […]

AM Best have said in a news release that they continue to be concerned about the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund’s ability to pay claims in the event of a major hurricane. This despite the continuing talk about the best way to shore up the fund, or replace it with private market risk transfer instruments. No […]

Citizens Property Insurance, the state backed property insurer of last resort in Florida, has said that it plans to take out some reinsurance from the private market this year. The last time Citizens accessed the private reinsurance market was two years ago as they have tended to rely on a cheaper source of reinsurance from […]