February 2010/3

Unveiling record underlying profits for 2009, Lloyd's (re)insurer Beazley has confirmed previous estimates of a negative impact on its £33mn 2009 profits...

(Re)insurance litigator leaves RPC for rival; Brit appoints chief information officer.

Clydesdale provides financing for Windsor; Allied World sets up new division; Katherine Barker to head Armour US subsidiary; Chris Blackham returns to insurance industry at Howden...

Guy Carpenter is set to part company with UK chairman Mark Hewett, it emerged last week.

Lloyd's insurer Chaucer has lured top Argo International underwriter Mark Lawrence to head up its new launch international liability division.

Guy Carpenter's Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Center (APCIC) over-estimated tropical cyclone activity in the Western-North Pacific region in 2009, the broker said in a review.

Scor reported increases in volumes and pricing across its portfolio during an upbeat renewals update last week.

American International Group (AIG) may be forced to take more than $8bn of MetLife stock in lieu of cash if it wants to get life subsidiary Alico off its hands, according to US reports.

Bermuda-domiciled Lloyd's insurer Hardy has received a stable ratings outlook from AM Best, ahead of its full year results due at the beginning of March.

PartnerRe announced a string of additional structural changes last week, following the closing of its acquisition of Paris Re.

Fitch has downgraded Berkshire Hathaway's insurance subsidiaries, as the Warren Buffett-backed conglomerate completed its $16bn mega-acquisition of railway operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF).

Underwriters need to improve how they handle their transactions with brokers and maintain underwriting discipline to weather the soft market better, the Lloyd's performance director Tom Bolt has warned.

London insurers were told last week that blueprints for the proposed relaunch of the New York Insurance Exchange (NYIE) - which is modelled on the structure at Lloyd's - will be set by September.

Despite bumper 2009 net profits, (re)insurers may already be failing to cover their cost of capital once the impact of prior-year reserve releases is stripped out.

US industrial construction company Performance Contractors Inc has filed a lawsuit against five Lloyd's insurers after suffering losses under the alleged $8bn Stanford Ponzi scheme.

Revenues at Aon and Willis were flat last year, but this steady overall global performance masked a sharp fall-off in recession-exposed UK business.

Lloyd's revealed a management team overhaul last week as it looks to implement its new three-year strategic plan, published last Monday (8 February).

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said it was "difficult to see the justification" for significant fee increases announced by the FSA on Friday (12 February).

Hector Sants revealed he would stand down as CEO of UK regulator the Financial Services Authority (FSA) last week.

Warren Buffett emerged last week as the biggest single shareholder in Munich Re - and next month his holding could breach the 7 percent mark.

The governments of Pakistan, Iran and Turkey have agreed to establish an Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) reinsurance company headquartered in Karachi, according to local reports.

The final framework of Solvency II (SII) is likely to be "tamed down" from the greatly increased capital requirements in the latest Quantitative Impact Study (QIS5), says Swiss Re board member Martin Albers.

The New York Insurance Department (NYID) last week (10 February) adopted the final version of its producer compensation disclosure regulation, which from 2011 will allow brokers to accept the contingent commissions lost in the Spitzer era.

Pat Ryan - the founder and retired executive chairman of Aon Corporation - is set to launch Ryan Specialty Group, a new managing general agent (MGA).

The head-on collision of two Belgian commuter trains this morning (15 February) is understood to be covered by the private insurance market, with a local programme in force to cover the liabilities of state-owned railway operator SNCB.

Discussions over a deal for London market electronic trading platform RI3K have reached advanced stages, and The Insurance Insider understands that global IT providers Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell have joined IBM in outlining offers.

Allied World has substantially exceeded analyst earning projections after it joined its peers in recovering strongly from a cat hit 2008.

Full-year results to date suggest that 2009 was a year of solid recovery for the (re)insurance industry, with healthier investment performance and modest underwriting gains helping companies find their way back to profit.

Catastrophe modelling firm Eqecat estimates that the winter storms that struck the eastern US coast in the past week will cost insurers more than $2bn.

The total insured loss from the hangar that collapsed under the weight of snow at Dulles airport in Washington last week, crushing the aircraft inside, has been estimated at up to $440mn, The Insurance Insider understands.

Analysts from Morgan Stanley believe sovereign defaults from Eurozone members or other developed countries are "extremely unlikely", and consider insurers well placed to ride out the current sovereign debt storm.

A damning internal report has identified widespread malpractice in the management of the London Market Group (LMG)'s flagship eAccounting project, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

Former RenaissanceRe executives Bill Riker and Michael Cash have completed their first collateralised reinsurance transactions for Q Re (Bermuda) Ltd - a new, class 3 Bermudian reinsurer backed by legendary investor George Soros.