Cat bonds & reinsurance: archive
Every Cat bonds & reinsurance story in Insurance, newest first. 118 stories
1 story
Three Pacific hurricanes reach Category 5 as the season runs ahead of normal
Forecasters say both Pacific basins are four storms ahead of normal, with Mexico's catastrophe bond now hinging on Polo's coastal track.
4 stories
82% decides what Japan's 11% is worth
Bermuda's long-term reinsurers manage $1.52 trillion and count the United States for 82 per cent of ceded business, Japan for 11 — and the rulebooks in Tokyo and at the NAIC will decide which number grows.
Record reinsurance capital is not closing the catastrophe gap
A record $785 billion in reinsurer capital and a record cat bond year have made the top of the tower cheaper while the 84% of US earthquake exposure that carries no coverage at all remains untouched.
Fitch's 86 per cent on terms outranks its 60 on price
Reinsurers expect to sell property cat for less in January, and the survey's own numbers show they expect to sell it with less protection.
Moody's $700B gap is a terms test for ILS
The capital-markets pool is 280 times the property-casualty one; the scarce resource is a parametric trigger cedents will actually hold.
1 story
Resilience pricing runs through triggers, not granular models
Bermuda's $220 billion of disaster exposure gives the Marsh-WEF playbook a specific address, and the report's own data caveat points to parametric cover as the practical route.
3 stories
Bermuda's quiet August hides an annuity reinsurance book
Nine Class E licences inside a 46-registration year point to life and annuity risk; the fourth-quarter watch is whether collateralised and special-purpose filings return.
Mexico's cat bond may pay on a storm that misses
Polo's 892-millibar reading has already cleared the bond's pressure test; the coastal track decides whether $175 million moves from ILS investors to Mexico's treasury.
California pre-positions for a record El Niño before the first loss
A pre-loss emergency declaration gives reinsurers a named geography and a forecast, with no reported damage yet to price against.
2 stories
AM Best rates Charp Re, and the market still sets the price
A Good rating puts a new name in front of cedents; what it writes at is the number that decides whether this cycle's discipline holds.
A 3.05°C Pacific record is a January renewal problem
The strongest El Niño on the books arrives as a January terms problem, with Atlantic wind capacity still ample and the argument moving to sublimits.
2 stories
Swiss Re's $300bn Florida tail dwarfs the cat bond market
A single Miami or Tampa Bay landfall would test Bermuda's reinsurance and ILS capital against a loss the capital markets cannot absorb alone.
Envelop moves its cyber analytics into casualty
A 30-year treaty veteran from Volante gives the data-first cyber specialist market credibility, but liability is where its underwriting edge has the least room to show.
2 stories
Structured reinsurance demand is a soft-market tell
Marsh Re's structured solutions head sees demand rising on both sides of the book, the pattern cedents adopt when they expect conventional pricing to keep improving.
Europe names parametric cover; the drafting decides who funds it
Von der Leyen's alliance picks group and parametric cover, pointing first at public pools and second at the capital markets Bermuda already supplies.
1 story
Swiss Re sizes a $300 billion Florida tail against a soft market
Swiss Re Institute's $300 billion Florida scenario lands on a market that just cut property cat rates 15% to 20%.
3 stories
Bald Range likely lands in cedents' results, not cat bonds
A modest Canadian wildfire total says more about where January's repricing will be fought than about any catastrophe bond trigger.
The data-center boom is building a cat aggregation reinsurers can't see
Twenty US locations hold about 80 percent of storm-damaged data-center floor space, and the next wave of construction is moving deeper into the same hail and tornado belt.
Cyber XoL's basis-risk debate is really a drafting fight
Definitions decide whether the next cyber catastrophe is a claim, which puts the specialty-line discipline test inside the wording.
3 stories
A record-quiet Atlantic will not hold the January line
At 7% of normal activity with its peak still ahead, the basin leaves cat bonds and collateralized reinsurance holding an untested position, not a clean year.
The January test has moved to specialty lines
With property-cat pricing softening, the discipline test now runs through specialty lines — and Conduit's retreat up the tower is the tell.
Bermuda's delegated-underwriting push hits a bordereaux bottleneck
Convex runs a fifth of its business through MGAs and MGUs and says it would write more — the ceiling is administrative, not appetite.
4 stories
September's storm losses land on cedents, not on cat bonds
A loss that settles inside retentions leaves the capital markets alone and hands primary carriers one more exhibit for the January attachment argument.
Lowell's Hawaii loss tests wording, not reinsurance capital
A single-firm insured loss estimate sits below the level that moves cat capital, leaving the wind-flood boundary as the thing to watch.
Bermuda's life reinsurance lead is a capital-rules story
The NAIC's jurisdiction-risk charge, once drafted, will put a price on the Cayman gap Fitch currently describes only as a transparency problem.
The discipline test now runs through the investment portfolio
BCG's call for underwriting discipline lands on a sector whose returns now depend more on its fixed-income book than on the risk it underwrites.
1 story
Arthur Re's three deals say cat bond friction is the constraint
Three placements through one Bermuda vehicle in three months make Gallagher Re's case that the cat bond market's binding constraint has moved from investor appetite to the cost of getting a deal done.
3 stories
Fitch: 2027 reinsurance softening moves past price into terms
With capacity outrunning demand, reinsurers are expected to give up attachment points and coverage. Casualty sidecars will test whether the discipline of the hard market survives.
Cedar Trace's $300m Lloyd's syndicate forms a Bermuda capital loop
Existing Mereo shareholders and Cedar Trace ILS investors are expected to back the 2027 syndicate, making the launch a test of whether affiliated capital underwrites like balance-sheet money.
Swiss Re: cat lull is luck, not a license to cut
As Rendez-Vous approaches, the reinsurer is pointing to a 5%-7% long-term loss trend and a $320 billion tail scenario to argue that January renewals should be priced on risk, not on the last two quiet years.
2 stories
A Toronto storm puts a regional price on soft terms
Gallagher Re sizes the Sept. 2 event at hundreds of millions of dollars — small enough to leave ILS capital unmoved and local enough to sharpen Canadian renewal conversations.
Health reinsurance's $203 billion structure test
Ceded U.S. health premium has more than tripled since 2016; the harder question is what contract terms the growth was built on.
1 story
Compre's Lloyd's retro deal: an option on the long tail
The £200m structured adverse development cover is built around annual repricing, which makes the first renewal the real underwriting event.
4 stories
Samsung insurers move on Canopius control
The reported purchase of another 50% would push the Korean duo toward 90% control and hand Centerbridge Partners an exit, at a moment when strategics and public balance sheets are doing the buying.
Wildfires open AM Best's top-50 reinsurer table
The January 2025 California fires set the tone for AM Best's new ranking of the world's largest reinsurers.
Triangle Eight rides Bermuda's start-up wave with a cost warning
The advisory group's first year tracks a surge of BMA registrations; founder Heather Kitson argues the island's edge now rests on what it costs to stay there.
Fitch extends deteriorating reinsurance outlook into 2027
Price declines compounding with looser terms make the January renewals a test of structure as much as balance-sheet strength.
3 stories
Bermuda life sidecars quadruple to $375 billion, capital test looms
Morningstar DBRS says the island's life and annuity sidecar liabilities have quadrupled in four years, with no known recaptures; the collateral question now sets the terms for growth.
AM Best's look-through puts the casualty sidecar tail on sponsors
AM Best sees property-cat rates as adequate but falling; its method for under-collateralized casualty sidecars answers where the next adverse development lands: on the sponsor.
WMO's strongest El Niño forecast tests 2027 cat pricing
Near-certain El Niño persistence through February 2027 puts the warmest-year baseline on the renewal calendar.