hurricane

Reinsurance and retrocessional reinsurance investment manager Markel CATCo Investment Management has announced this morning its intention to raise funds, to take advantage of pricing opportunities being seen in the retrocessional reinsurance market and its requirement for new capital.

Markel CATCo Investment Management has delivered a warning to investors in its flagship listed CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund Ltd. that full-year performance could be erased by the impacts of recent major catastrophe events.

Catastrophe risk modelling specialist Karen Clark & Company (KCC) has launched a new product designed to allow re/insurers to track potential claims and losses from hurricanes in real-time, while allowing them to analyse key exposure metrics.

Risk trading based on industry loss triggers linked to hurricane Harvey’s eventual insurance and reinsurance industry toll continued last week, with so-called “dead cat” trades taking place and the focus of counterparties shifting to higher levels of loss.

An analyst at Moody’s Analytics has estimated the total economic loss due to hurricane Harvey at up to $75 billion. The massive price tag would see the storm on a par with superstorm Sandy in terms of economic impact to the United States.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market and providers of capital market backed reinsurance capacity can help with the job of narrowing the flood risk protection gap in the wake of hurricane Harvey, according to Rick Miller Managing Director – Co-Head of Insurance Linked Securities at Jardine Lloyd Thompson Capital Markets.

Ratings agencies see aggregate catastrophe bonds and private ILS or collateralized reinsurance contracts as having the greatest exposure to hurricane Harvey’s impacts on Texas, but for losses to occur and be significant the final bill will need to come in at the upper end of industry loss estimates.

Reinsurance and retrocessional reinsurance investment manager Markel CATCo said today that it does not expect any significant hit to the portfolio of its flagship listed fund, the CATCo Reinsurance Opportunities Fund Ltd., as long as the industry loss from hurricane Harvey’s wind and flood impacts remains below $10 billion.

Analysts tracking the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry believe that hurricane Harvey could cause as much as $20 billion (at the top end of estimates) of industry losses, but with flood expected to be the major driver over the wind and surge exposure.

Catastrophe bond fund managers are not anticipating any loss to their investment holdings due to hurricane Harvey, although the mark-to-market impact witnessed in recent days could cause a limited hit to net asset values as cat bond positions thought most at risk of a major Harvey hit recover.