June 2013/3

Tom Bolt, the director of performance management at Lloyd's, has directed some wry swipes at the recent rash of broker portfolio facilities in the London market.

Benjamin Lawsky has again demonstrated his fervour for regulatory activism by publishing a report slating life insurers for minimising the amount of capital that they have to hold in reserves through $48bn of "shadow insurance" transactions.

The Insurance Insider tracks all the notable P&C sector share prices of the last week and compares year-to-date performances

Andrew Torrance, the current head of Allianz UK, is to become the CEO of the German insurer's US operation Fireman's Fund.

Bryan Wilburn and David Barrett have denied allegations that they breached a contract with US wholesaler ClearView Risk Holdings and subsidiary Southwest Risk by establishing a rival firm

The $1mn+ legal dispute between Costa Rican insurer Instituto Nacional de Seguros (INS) and brokers Hemispheric Reinsurance Group (HRG) and Howden Insurance Brokers took another turn last week after a Florida judge allowed INS to amend its complaint against the intermediaries to include fraudulent misrepresentation and constructive fraud.

New regulations, taxes and permanently low interest rates could threaten the insurance industry's ability to plug the estimated EUR4tn-EUR5tn European investment funding gap between 2012 and 2016, according to a study by Insurance Europe.

EIOPA has published its findings on life insurers' long-term guarantees, one of the main sticking points in getting Solvency II off the ground

Swiss investment manager Twelve Capital has increased its total assets under management (AuM) to almost $2bn after agreeing to take over the management of Falcon Private Bank's insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds.

The new capital lured by the relatively high returns of the catastrophe reinsurance sector could be around longer than some market watchers expect, according to Guy Carpenter's head of global business intelligence David Flandro.

Private equity heavyweight Apollo is not convinced that the reinsurance pricing cycle has been altered by the rise of the alternative market and has questioned whether now is the right time to move into the insurance-linked securities (ILS) management sector, according to sources.

Four new cat bond offerings have been launched in the past 10 days as sponsors continue to take advantage of the strong appetite among investors for securitised catastrophe reinsurance risk. We look at all the bonds in the pipeline, together with 2013 issuance to date...