Insurance

Although the last four years have been a challenging time for the ILS market in many ways, one positive development is that investors have become more discerning in their choice of fund managers, which could lead to the disappearance of “indifferent” funds, Quentin Perrot tells Artemis. Perrot, who serves as Vice President of Willis Re…

After years of impressive growth, the volume of available alternative reinsurance capital has “stagnated” and with little growth expected for the remainder of 2020 and into next year, a structural breakthrough might be needed, according to analysis by Fitch Ratings. At between $90 billion and $95 billion, the amount of capital supporting alternative reinsurance represents…

A new study looking at the effects of climate change on hurricanes and tropical cyclones suggests that the insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) industry may need to prepare for storms that cause even wider swathes of damage and losses, with a warmer world linked to damage extending further inland. It’s not a new hypothesis,…

Investors backing Lancashire Holdings third-party reinsurance and retrocession capital manager Lancashire Capital Management are being “supportive” as the key January renewals approach, according to the units CEO Darren Redhead. Asked about the environment for raising new capital for collateralised or ILS vehicles during the Lancashire Holdings quarterly earnings call last week, Redhead explained that the…

Commercial property insurance price rises continued to accelerate higher in all regions around the globe during the third-quarter of 2020, with catastrophe exposed property seeing some of the largest rate increases, according to Marsh. The insurance broker once again highlights the continued and accelerating hardening of property insurance rates, which is likely to turn into…

Insurance and reinsurance industry losses from wildfires burning across western U.S. states including California, Oregon and Colorado are together expected to have already reached beyond $8 billion, according to the latest report from Aon’s Impact Forecasting. The insurance and reinsurance broker’s catastrophe risk modelling, analytics and meteorology unit expects that the economic losses from the…

Obsidian Insurance Holdings, Inc., a recently launched program and fronting insurance holding company, has announced the A- A.M. Best rating of its excess and surplus (E&S) lines carrier. Obsidian Specialty Insurance Company was recently formed to help Obsidian expand its offering, which sees the company fronting insurance programs for a range of reinsurance capital providers.…

Vortex Insurance Agency, a specialist parametric insurance and weather risk transfer agency backed by the MS&AD group’s Mitsui Sumitomo and a subsidiary of MSI GuaranteedWeather, LLC, has launched a new online portal through which businesses can buy parametric rainfall insurance instantly. Vortex is a front-end distributor of parametric weather insurance products for MSI GuaranteedWeather, which…