risk transfer

It’s no surprise to read in Business Insurance that sales of catastrophe derivatives in the run up to the Atlantic storm season are strong, with volumes traded up and prices up to as well. Demand is being helped by the general scarcity of reinsurance and the fact that catastrophe bonds are currently an expensive option. […]

Babcock International Group, a leading UK based engineering support services company, has enacted a longevity swap to help it hedge the risks of longer life expectancies associated with it’s pension scheme. In doing so it has become the first UK company pension scheme to enter the longevity swap market. Credit Suisse have acted as the […]

Swiss Re has returned to the catastrophe bond market and placed it’s first deal in almost ten months. They have tapped their Successor II shelf programme to transfer more of their catastrophe risks to the capital markets. Successor II Ltd., set up in 2006, is a Cayman Islands based SPV which allows Swiss Re to […]

Munich Re and Tokio Marine Nichido Fire have closed a private catastrophe swap deal based on the Risk Management Solutions (RMS) Paradex-Europe Windstorm industry loss index. This transaction brings the total notional amount of risk transferred using Paradex to in excess of $250m. Having indices of losses available (via third-party sources) which can be utilised […]

The CME Group has announced that they have acquired the Carvill Hurricane Index and changed it’s name to the CME Hurricane Index. This makes total sense as the hurricane futures and options contracts are all traded and settled on the CME. In addition the CME have brought EQECAT on board to be the new calculation […]

Standard & Poor’s have placed the notes of the Blue Coast Ltd catastrophe bond onto CreditWatch negative due to the possibility of losses from hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Blue Coast provides Allianz Risk Transfer with cover against U.S. landfalling hurricanes until December 2010 (with an option to extend a further 24 months), the deal was […]

UK insurer Norwich Union has entered into a deal with Royal Bank of Scotland and Partner Re to transfer £475m of longevity related risks to the capital markets through what is essentially a longevity swap. The transaction will provide cover for these annuity/pension related risks up to 2018. Transferring these longevity risks to the capital […]

Climate Change PLC has announced it’s full year figures for 2008. As the owners of the Insurance Futures Exchange (IFEX) they have numbers to share on how well the hurricane risk trading facility (housed at the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange) has performed in the first full year of windstorm futures trading. They report that the […]

Further evidence of the risks to cash flow faced by small retailers and the need to protect themselves against the vagaries of the weather emerged today in the form of a report from the British Retail Consortium on February sales. They’re blaming the snowfall in the UK in early February for a drop in retail […]

Guy Carpenter have been awarded a grant by the Microinsurance Innovation Facility to allow them to develop a reinsurance facility for microfinance operations. Using the grant Guy Carpenter will create the infrastructure for a reinsurance pooling facility dedicated to microfinance risk transfer solutions. This will enable microfinance initiatives to access the global reinsurance and risk […]