July 2014/1

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market needs to look into the "depths of the reinsurance market" for further growth as it may be nearing the limits of its expansion in natural catastrophe business, according to Credit Suisse Asset Management's head of ILS Niklaus Hilti.

Even the longest cheating phases eventually break

The retrocession market has sourced $1bn of new capacity in the past year, with most of the growth coming from traditional reinsurance carriers, Aon Benfield Global Re Specialty chairman Piers Cantlay said at a Guernsey ILS Insight event hosted in Zurich last week.

Lloyd's (re)insurer Amlin is set to lift its stake in insurance-linked securities fund manager Leadenhall Capital Partners from 40 percent to 75 percent, six years after it helped launch the firm.

The Insurance Insider's ownership survey highlights the continuing dominance of a few leading fund managers... and Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway has given credence to insurers' fears that it will begin writing energy business direct by taking a 40 percent share of top-10 energy account PDvsa on a three-year basis

Cedants and brokers gave catastrophe reinsurers another shellacking at 1 July, with premiums sharply down and smaller reinsurers left out in the cold as market stratification intensified.

The stellar gains of 2013 are a distant memory as The Insurance Insider index remained broadly flat in H1