March 2013/4

Deal counts fell last year among US (re)insurers despite conditions that would be expected to encourage strong transactional activity.

UK business process outsourcer Capita Insurance Services has unveiled an initiative to enable its individual risk capture services to become a shared service for the wider London market.

Many of the smaller Lloyd's players do not add value to insurance buyers and create further complications for claims handling, according to Eric Andersen, CEO of Aon Risk Solutions (ARS) Americas.

Chubb looks set to complete the placement of its $1.5bn US excess-of-loss catastrophe cover with a small rate rise even though reinsurers were forced to swallow close to $300mn of Superstorm Sandy losses, The Insurance Insider revealed last week.

Property Claims Services (PCS) has allayed fears of further creep on the bulk of Sandy claims as it reiterated its previous $18.75bn industry loss figure.

The energy account purchased by Norwegian blue chip Statoil is set to price down 7.5 percent at renewal, clearly demonstrating the current weakness of the offshore energy market, The Insurance Insider understands.  

Pricing in the Japanese cat market may have held up slightly better than elsewhere due to the relatively modest impact of two potential negative rating factors: the expansive underwriting of premium-hungry Berkshire Hathaway reinsurance supremo Ajit Jain and the aggression of the collateralised markets.

Most Japanese catastrophe excess-of-loss (XoL) reinsurance programmes look set to renew with very similar structures to last year and on very similar terms, The Insurance Insider understands.

Warburg Pincus - the private equity firm with a long track-record of investing in the (re)insurance sector - is one of the potential acquirers conducting due diligence on up-for-sale Lloyd's (re)insurer Atrium, The Insurance Insider can reveal.

Government interference and the increasing size of vessels are fuelling a rampant increase in removal of wreckage costs.

The US technology company Ebix is set to purchase the London-based electronic placement platform Qatarlyst from the Qatar Financial Centre Authority (QFCA), The Insurance Insider can reveal.

Outgoing Canopius Bermuda CEO Susan Patschak is raising funds with a view to acquiring one or more Floridian insurers, The Insurance Insider can reveal.