ILS

As previously announced by the company in the summer, Hannover Re life reinsurance pioneer Wolf Becke is retiring on 1 January 2012 after serving as a member of the group's executive board for almost 20 years.

Norway's Meteorological Institute has described windstorm Dagmar, which ripped across Norway, Sweden and central Finland on Christmas Day as possibly the third worst windstorm to strike the country in the past 50 years.

Lloyd's insurer Amlin closed its first cat bond Tramline Re at $150mn or double the initial target size, as revealed by our sister title Trading Risk earlier this week

US property cat reinsurance programmes renewing at 1.1 are seeing rates up anywhere between 5 and 50 percent depending on loss activity and whether they have coastal exposure, according to broker Holborn.

Lloyd's (re)insurer Amlin has closed its first cat bond issuance Tramline Re at $150mn, sister publication Trading Risk has reported.

The European insurance watchdog has warned that the region could be facing a full-scale “meltdown” without decisive and comprehensive action from policymakers to reassure markets.

It has been a hard slog fundraising for some of the new insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund managers over the past six months, with only a couple managing to attract new capital by year-end.

Aggregate cat bond deals have done well this December as investors placed large orders for the double-digit premiums on offer.

Giant European insurance group Generali has seen its insurer financial strength rating slashed three notches to A- from AA- by rating agency Fitch due to its heavy exposure to the Eurozone debt crisis.

Bermudian reinsurer Argo Re is set to revisit the cat bond market with a second offering this year under its Loma Re platform, our sister title Trading Risk has revealed.

Quoted Lloyd's insurer Amlin is turning to the cat bond market for the first time through its new Tramline Re offering, seeking aggregate reinsurance cover for peak US and European perils.

Two new cat bonds closed to strong demand last week, taking total 2011 sales to $4.5bn.