Insurance-linked investments

White Bear Capital, the holding company of Blenheim Underwriting and a Lloyd’s focused insurance and reinsurance underwriting operation that counts ILS specialist Nephila Capital as a key strategic investor, has added £80 million more in funding from special situations focused investment house Alchemy Partners.

Should uncertainty over eventual losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic result in the trapping of significant amounts of retro capital at the end of 2020, the upwards pressure on rates in the market should be expected to persist, Philipp Rüede of Swiss Re said.

Private equity investment giant Blackstone has thrown its weight behind Brit’s algorithmic, follow-form Lloyd’s syndicate Ki, investing alongside Brit parent Fairfax in a $500m capital raise for the new venture.

The fact that it is primarily private equity capital looking to replenish the reinsurance industry’s coffers is unlikely to dampen the effects of rate hardening in the near term, according to Luca Albertini, chief executive of Leadenhall Capital Partners LLP.

Insurance giant American International Group, Inc. (AIG) has “high hopes” for further growth of its insurance-linked securities (ILS) and collateralised reinsurance manager AlphaCat, expecting to see “a lot of demand” for its vehicles at the renewals, Peter Zaffino said this week.

The Climate Measurement Standards Initiative (CMSI), an Australian led collaboration on the physical risks of climate change and their disclosure, has developed a set of open-source, voluntary guidelines to help banks, financial institutions and insurers better assess the risk and quantify the costs of climate-related damage.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has launched its first pilot disaster insurance scheme in the Philippines and has also approved a $500 million loan for the country that is contingent on a natural disaster or public health emergency occurring.

Global reinsurer Swiss Re, which has been expanding its alternative reinsurance capital strategies in recent years, is seeing the “beginning of an influx” of capital into insurance-linked securities (ILS), something it believes will continued, Philipp Rüede, Head of the firms Alternative Capital Partners unit told us.

Tullett Prebon has successfully completed another issuance through its Insurance Linked Notes (ILN) platform, with a $10 million U.S. wind industry loss instrument arranged, securitised and issued to investors.

Swiss pension funds, or Pensionskassen as they are known, could now allocate a greater percentage of their capital to insurance-linked securities (ILS), if they wanted to, as infrastructure investments have been carved out of the alternatives bucket.