November 2013/3

Shares in (re)insurance brokers continued to climb last week as investor confidence was boosted by the sector's broadly solid organic growth figures for the third quarter.

European P&C (re)insurance stocks were generally down last week, although the EU finally reached a breakthrough deal on the long-delayed Solvency II regime.

Novae and Amlin were the only carriers to outperform the benchmark FTSE 100 index last week thanks to a positive reaction to their strong Q3 results.

The majority of US-listed (re)insurers traded up last week as the third quarter reporting season drew to a close.

Puerto Rico has ramped up efforts to expand its international insurance centre and pitch itself as a Latin American platform for the (re)insurance and captive industry.

Sensitivity over data protection following the Ed Snowden revelations could spark a populist movement to push through "very unpopular" data regulations that may have a significant impact on the insurance industry.

Lloyd's most senior lawyer, Sean McGovern, warned the US House of Representatives last week that increasing the trigger for TRIA, the US government backstop for terrorism risk, could increase the burden on the US taxpayer.

Beazley's US arm is involved in a dispute with American supermarket chain Schnucks over costs relating to a cyber attack in which 2.4 million pieces of customer data were stolen.

The steady stream of legal suits that followed Superstorm Sandy may soon turn into a flood, according to the leading US insurance attorney Dennis Wade.

Lloyd's (re)insurer Novae is set to appeal a Queen's Bench Commercial Court decision that held it liable for a retro claim relating to damage to more than 165 Tesco stores affected by the 2011 Thai floods, The Insurance Insider understands.

Reinsurers should take advantage of alternative market capacity but it is possible to "survive nicely" in the industry without managing third-party capital, Validus CEO Ed Noonan said last week.

Falling catastrophe rates are a long-term secular trend rather than a short-term cycle phenomenon, said Nephila Capital co-founder Frank Majors during a panel discussion at the ILS Bermuda Convergence 2013 conference last week.

We track where the losses flow from the recent adverse legal decisions in Spain. Two of the worst-affected P&C insurers in The Insurance Insider's universe are HCC - a market leader in the Spanish surety market - and Scor, a 40 percent shareholder and major reinsurer of the Spanish construction carrier Asefa

The Insurance Insider's Data Room compares the third quarter results of the industry's big three brokers...

Citizens is facing a last-minute race to get its ambitious clearing house proposal up and running for 1 January 2014.

The depopulation of Florida's Citizens Property Insurance Corporation is at a key stage as the state-backed insurer looks to maintain momentum through take-out deals and the execution of its proposed clearing house initiative by 1 January

The combined top line of London's publicly listed (re)insurers inched up by 1.5 percent in the third quarter to reach $3.57bn, according to data compiled by The Insurance Insider. We examine the third-quarter trading statements of the London-listed carriers and see who is growing, and who is retrenching...

If cedants are struggling for higher ceding commissions and improved terms on their reinsurance contracts - an unlikely scenario in today's climate perhaps - they might do worse than point to a continued improvement in Bermudian carriers' loss experience on reinsurance business

Industry-wide insured losses stemming from Super Typhoon Haiyan, which made landfall in the Philippines earlier this month with Category 5 strength, could now range between $300mn and $700mn, according to a forecast by AIR Worldwide.

Total disclosed losses stemming from the unusual hailstorms that struck parts of Germany and France in late July have reached nearly $1.5bn as the third quarter reporting season draws to a close, according to data compiled by The Insurance Insider's Data Room.

Dual Ibérica, the Spanish arm of Hyperion Group's global managing general agency (MGA) Dual, has unveiled ambitious diversification plans as it cited production figures that showed the market beginning to pick up after the country's financial and banking crisis.

The Spanish economy is through the worst of the country's economic and banking crisis and is in a position to benefit from internal reforms and links to fast-growing Latin American economies, senior London market executives heard at a high-level gathering in Madrid last week.

Further misery for Tower Group as it's forced to remind investors about its parlous situation.

Catastrophe modeller AIR is set to release a model for US inland flood risks in early 2014 in a bid to make the market more viable for private market insurers.