April 2007/4

AM Best has assigned an A- rating to Max Specialty Insurance Company, the recently launched excess and surplus lines operation of Bermudian Max Re Capital.

Swiss Re has launched its EUR329mn European Clean Energy Fund to invest in environmentally friendly projects.

Integro Ltd, the insurance broker which recently unveiled ambitious plans to roll-out a global wholesale and facultative division, has appointed a new chief financial officer to replace the retiring Joseph Salerno.

Amlin Bermuda Ltd has appointed Alun Thomas, a former director of North American Reinsurance in Aon Ltd’s Property division, as an underwriter.

The failure of previous ventures has given the London market a certain notoriety for its inability to embrace new processes and methods of doing business. But is this fair? And, more importantly, are we finally seeing some real progress?

Property facultative and catastrophe treaty lines in South America are likely to continue softening in 2007 after bumper returns in 2006, according to Swiss Re’s head of reinsurance in Latin America, Beat Strebel.

European insurance trade body the Comité Européen des Assurances (CEA) has urged the European Commission (EC) to retain the industry’s block exemption from certain anti-competition rules, arguing it actually promotes competition.

There are only a few remaining spaces at The Insurance Insider’s Capital Management 2007 event in London this Thursday (19 April).

One of the final strands of litigation remaining from US bank PNC Financial Services Group Inc’s decision to repackage its bad debt via financial reinsurance with American International Group (AIG) was settled last week.

Underwriters are divided on whether premiums in the financial institutions market will bottom out this year, according to a survey conducted by Willis.

Charlie Crist, the Florida governor behind far-reaching reform in the state’s hurricane catastrophe fund earlier this year, has run into opposition from the White House over proposals for a federal catastrophe insurance programme.

The Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), the island's financial regulator, has appointed a new chief executive to begin in July, the body said last week.