Insurance

Ariel Re, a reinsurance unit of Argo Group, is to be acquired by private equity investors and former CEO Ryan Mather will return to run the company, with a focus on leveraging traditional and alternative capital, as well as a property catastrophe leaning. The acquisition is being sealed in a deal led by Pelican Ventures,…

Hurricane Zeta’s wind and storm surge impacts on Mexico and the United States are expected to cost the insurance and reinsurance market close to $4.4 billion, according to an early estimate from Karen Clark & Company. The catastrophe risk modeller is first out of the blocks with a post-landfall estimate of the insurance and reinsurance…

Some higher-risk insurance-linked securities (ILS) and collateralised reinsurance funds have been forced to reserve more than 4% of their fund assets in case of losses from business interruption claims caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a report suggests. For the ILS fund market, the main exposure to losses from the pandemic is through business interruption claims…

USAA has successfully secured the upsized target of $400 million of reinsurance limit from its latest catastrophe bond transaction, with the two lower-risk tranches of the Residential Reinsurance 2020 Limited (Series 2020-2) transaction pricing down significantly for the insurer. USAA returned to the catastrophe bond market around mid-October with its second cat bond transaction of…

The first catastrophe of the 2020-21 season has been declared in Australia by its Insurance Council, after large hail of up to tennis ball size hit south-east Queensland damaging cars and homes. An influx of claims is expected once as residents and businesses inspect the damage and lodge impacts with their insurance providers. An initial…

Hiscox Group, the specialist insurance or reinsurance underwriter and ILS capital manager, has reported that its reinsurance focused Hiscox Re & ILS unit has secured rate increases of 12% across its portfolio for the year so far, with retrocession up 20%, although its book shrank at the mid-year renewals. Gross premiums written by Hiscox Re…

The Philippines government’s World Bank facilitated IBRD CAR 123-124 catastrophe bond transaction is under threat from typhoon Goni, which may cause a partial loss of principal for investors in the cat bond if it maintains significant wind speeds as it approaches Manila. Super typhoon Goni, as it currently is, has become the most intense tropical…

Expectations of just how much insurance-linked securities (ILS) collateral could be trapped at the end of 2020 are on the rise, alongside the frequency of losses and total costs from catastrophe events in the United States, it seems. Uncertainty over the COVID-19 pandemic and its potential losses for the insurance and reinsurance industry is the…