November 2011/4

Hiscox's Bermuda platform has become the latest reinsurer to qualify for reduced collateral requirements in the state of New York.

A planned $125mn cat bond from California workers' compensation insurer State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF) and a repeat deal from French reinsurer Scor are set to take total issuance past the $4bn mark this year.

Collateralised retrocession writer Catco has attracted at least $375mn from a new fundraising round, putting the firm's reinsurance funds under management at nearly $900mn in its first year.

The old underwriting adage that good years get better while bad years gets worse seems to have been borne out by developments in syndicate forecasts for the past two years of account at Lloyd's (re)insurers.

The wave of civil unrest and revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) will have a negative impact on the predicted growth of the developing insurance markets in the region, according to AM Best.

Optimism on rates broadly outweighed third quarter combined ratio pain across US and Bermudian P&C (re)insurers, causing a strong rise in stocks within the sector through the reporting season.

Soft market conditions and higher policy limits, aircraft values and liability settlements are driving aviation underwriters toward a "perfect storm", according to a report from broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT)'s aerospace division.

US P&C insurer Alleghany will assume the management of Transatlantic Re's $13.7bn investment float and determine the allocation of capital between subsidiaries, but the reinsurer will otherwise retain the right to chart its own path.

Tokio Marine's net loss from the Great East Japan earthquake has grown from 90bn yen ($1.2bn) to 150bn yen ($1.9bn) in the months following the catastrophe.

Following the Thai flooding, attention has so far been focused on reinsurance losses from the Japanese big three or regional (re)insurers, but the international cat programmes of global insurers are expected to take losses too.

French state-owned reinsurer CCR is the first of the international reinsurers to publicly withdraw from Thailand following the devastating flooding which some (re)insurers are now privately estimating could cost the industry over $20bn.

Solvency II will cost the UK insurance industry £1.9bn from 2008 to 2013 according to a consultation paper Transposition of Solvency II released this month by UK regulator the Financial Services Authority (FSA).