August 2009/1

A seepage of asbestos claims into Oil Casualty Insurance Ltd (OCIL)’s loss-stricken excess liability cat bond, Avalon Re, has thrown into question the valuation of its August tender offer to re

Risk Management Solutions (RMS) estimates a reduction of up to 35 percent in insured loss estimates for Californian earthquake, following a revision of its North American earthquake model this month.

IFEX has added to its suite of event-linked futures (ELF), listing Eastern seaboard and North East US tropical wind contracts on the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE). IFEX – which trades

Insured losses from natural catastrophes were an above average $11bn for the first half of the year, according to Munich Re. Between January and June 2009, there were 380 natural catastrophes worldwi

Reinsurer SCOR has settled its long-running dispute with Highfields Capital Management, the former main minority shareholder in its 2001 sidecar vehicle Irish Reinsurance Partners (IRP) Holdings Limi

 Swiss insurer Zurich Financial Services (ZFS) has confirmed receipt of $128.5mn in paid claims from its $190mn KAMP Re cat bond, sparking a flurry of trading interest in the distressed notes. Pricin

As predicted in July, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) lowered its ratings on four tranches of USAA’s Residential Reinsurance 2007, upon receipt of the annual reset reports from AIR Worldwide. In

Outstanding cat bond capacity declined again in the second quarter by $779mn to $11.2bn, as the value of maturing bonds outstripped new issuances. This marked the second consecutive quarter in which

In an extract from the report – the firm’s European head of capital markets Des Potter discusses the pros and cons of non-US peril transactions. US wind is the largest global peril in the

The cat bond market is braced for a busy year-end as the market is still “on track” for an estimated $3-4bn of new ILS issuance in 2009, according to market sources. With $1.8bn of cat bo

The two cat bonds to come to market in July both increased in size significantly during the marketing phase, evincing a strong demand from investors for new ILS issuance. North Carolina’s state

Electronic weather trading platform Weather Risk Solutions (WRS) has fully launched a series of hurricane commodity call options, allowing traders to hedge the risk of a landfalling hurricane in 78 U