October 2015/3

Share price data on The Insurance Insider's universe of P&C (re)insurers

Short-tail specialists led the way as The Insider 30 stocks outperformed all the main indices last week.

A successful bid for London market back office outsourcer and software firm Xchanging would boost its far larger rival Capita with sought-after earnings growth and a claim to the London market. But with Apollo still in the game, could the outsourcer be tempted to raise its offer?

A number of global specialty (re)insurers have made routine announcements about their losses from the explosions in Tianjin in August, confirming that the event will take a meaningful bite out of third quarter earnings.

The third quarter is predicted to bring lower earnings for P&C carriers, driven by deteriorating underwriting margins and the slowing of reserve releases.

Axis Re CEO Jay Nichols said that convergence in the reinsurance industry would continue as insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds and traditional reinsurers will continue to resemble one another more closely.

New hedge fund reinsurers need to successfully launch on the public markets before they can follow in the wake of Third Point Re, according to a panel of experts speaking at the Trading Risk New York Rendez-Vous 2015.

Executives at Towers Watson and Willis have been portrayed as the bad guys in a series of activist shareholder complaints from Towers Watson investors that argue for the proposed $18bn merger to be terminated.

Mills leaves Endurance; Argo hires former Lloyd's claims head; CCR: flood losses could hit EUR650mn; AIG hires CUO; Thomas Miller buys into Osprey; Pioneer US casualty E&S launch; AIG sells Central America operations; XL Catlin hires SVP for Americas region

Lloyd's has urged insurers to make greater use of data analytics as it warned of the catastrophic potential of emerging science-based liability risks.

Total capacity traded over the three Lloyd's capacity auctions this year came to £42mn ($65mn), down more than 60 percent on volumes traded in 2014.

Acappella Syndicate 2014 is the latest Lloyd's player to announce its intention to write political risks and terrorism business with the launch of a new unit headed up by Jonathan Powell.