ratings

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has published a report discussing the impact of hurricane Irene to re/insurers. They conclude that Irene will have a limited impact to re/insurers but as part of the overall losses suffered this year Irene is likely to play a part in the continuing upward pressure on rates. Whether that pressure […]

Fitch Ratings have published an updated version of their rating criteria for insurance-linked securities transactions including catastrophe bonds. The new rating criteria replaces three existing Fitch reports which covered the sector, the ‘Insurance-Linked Securities Rating Criteria (Global)’ issued on Feb. 4, 2008; ‘Catastrophe Bonds Rating Criteria’ issued on March 11, 2008; and ‘Life Insurance Reserve […]

The Vega Capital Ltd. 2010-1 Class C notes were one of the last tranches of catastrophe bonds which were still considered at risk due to the 11th March earthquake in Japan. Ratings agency Moody’s had placed the $63.9m of cat bond notes issued by Vega Capital in December 2010 on review in March as they […]

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has now finished resolving the ratings issues surrounding 16 catastrophe bond tranches which use the Risk Management Solutions (RMS) U.S. hurricane model. The RMS model was updated earlier this year causing the probability of attachment for some cat bonds to increase, thus resulting in an assessment and new rating from S&P.

Ratings agency A.M. Best have followed suit and downgraded the two tranches of the 2009 Montana Re Ltd. catastrophe bond transaction due to the significant increases in attachment probabilities brought on by the new and updated version of the Risk Management Solutions U.S. hurricane risk model.

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has begun to resolve the issues surrounding ratings of 16 catastrophe bond tranches which use the Risk Management Solutions (RMS) U.S. hurricane model. RMS released a new risk model earlier this year which S&P felt had sufficiently changed the risk profile of the transactions to warrant placing them on CreditWatch negative […]

As insured loss estimates from the record-setting U.S. tornado season are reported, the potential impact to exposed catastrophe bonds become clearer. The latest update on the cat bond fallout was reported today as Standard & Poor’s announced that they have downgraded the ratings of Mariah Re Ltd.’s Series 2010-1 notes.

Sixteen tranches of outstanding catastrophe bond transactions were placed on CreditWatch negative on the 18th April as a result of the updated hurricane risk model launched by Risk Management Solutions (RMS). Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s placed the notes on watch while it assessed the impact to the cat bonds risk profile and trigger points.

The Mariah Re Ltd. catastrophe bond, which provides coverage to American Family Mutual Insurance for severe thunderstorms including tornadoes, has continued to incur qualifying event losses from the recent severe weather across the U.S. The events which have qualified have now resulted in sufficient covered losses for the rating of the transaction to be placed […]

Here’s a piece of news that you may not be expecting which has just broken and could hint at how the much discussed RMS risk model change may be reacted to by the ratings agencies. One tranche of USAA’s 2009 Residential Reinsurance 2009 Ltd. catastrophe bond has been downgraded due to an updated risk model, […]