Retrocession news

Howden RE, the reinsurance broking arm of the broader Howden broking group, has announced the hire of non-marine retrocession broking expert Doreen Tan from Aon, who joins the company as a Director.

It feels a little negative to focus on just two ILS fund strategies in this way, but as the Stone Ridge Asset Management mutual insurance-linked securities (ILS) and catastrophe bond funds are the only ones that are priced on a daily basis, they are providing valuable insights for the rest of the ILS market in […]

Another indication of the impacts of hurricane Ian for the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market is in how the publicly available net asset values of mutual catastrophe bond, ILS and reinsurance linked investment funds have been moving.

With major hurricane Ian approaching its Florida landfall, the main mutual insurance-linked securities (ILS), catastrophe bond and reinsurance linked investment funds have experienced some declines, with Stone Ridge Asset Management’s strategies leading the way.

The catastrophe bond market is very well-positioned, with cedent interest in utilising cat bonds as reinsurance risk transfer tools on the rise, while pricing has already risen high enough to attract investors to deploy more capital, according to GC Securities Shiv Kumar.

Tremor Technologies, the insurtech with a technology-based programmatic insurance and reinsurance risk transfer marketplace, has announced the launch of Tremor Sandbox™, a full-featured demo version of its software allowing reinsurance buyers and sellers to try out its platform.

For major reinsurance companies, de-risking their books, such as we’re seeing with the pull-back from property catastrophe risk in some quarters, will need to be a balancing act of finding their optimal gross exposure and use of retrocession, S&P Global Ratings has said.

Relatively strict asset allocation protocols could become a driver for some investors to downsize their allocations to insurance-linked securities (ILS), as broader macro-economic effects and capital market volatility mean some allocations could have to be reduced, to stay within their defined thresholds.

As the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market continues to reset itself after a number of years of heavy catastrophe losses, growth is likely to be more prominent in areas such as catastrophe bonds and top-layer peak peril strategies, that have displayed more consistent performance, Twelve Capital’s Marcel Grandi believes.

Growth of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market is not as assured as it might seem, with a number of potential threats to it. But Tom Johansmeyer, Head of PCS at Verisk, believes there is plenty of opportunity for ILS expansion, with specialty retrocession one clear area for ILS market growth.