February 2014/3

US-listed (re)insurance shares had a strong week with an average gain of 3.05 percent, reversing losses of the previous week.

The European peer group reported an average 1.1 percent share price gain last week, dragged down by the near 8 percent deterioration to RSA's share price.

Global broker stocks generally performed well last week as the reporting season for the subset came to a close.

Catlin was the only Lloyd's carrier to outperform the benchmark performance of the FTSE 100 last week, while the remainder saw mixed fortunes.

The US farm bill that secures the future of the US crop insurance programme for the next five years was signed into law by President Obama earlier this month, in a move expected to expand the scheme by $5.7bn between now and 2023.

The end may finally be in sight for a scheme of arrangement to wind up the UK arm of run-off insurer Highlands Insurance Company UK (HUK).

HomeServe, the UK personal lines intermediary that styles itself as the fifth emergency service, has been hit with a heavy £31mn fine from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for serious and long-running customer service failings.

Insurance IT services provider Ebix has agreed to pay $6.5mn to settle a shareholder class action suit triggered by allegations of accounting irregularities in 2011.

QBE is suing a group of professional indemnity (PI) insurers led by subsidiaries of AIG and Allied World after they refused to pay claims related to investigations and lawsuits against QBE's force-placed lender insurance business Normal 0 fa

Catlin Group has created two reinsurance funds with internal capital as it weighs up whether to enter the third-party asset management space, according to the London-listed (re)insurer's founding CEO Stephen Catlin.

Munich Re is seeking to raise up to $100mn from a new Queen Street cat bond that will again cover Australian cyclone risk.

The retrocession market is now significantly more focused on aggregate capacity following the 1 January renewals as demand for occurrence covers shrank, according to Credit Suisse Asset Management's head of insurance-linked securities (ILS) Niklaus Hilti.