September 2004/4

Wellington chief buys £500,000 shares Wellington Underwriting’s new chief executive Preben Prebensen acquired almost £500,000 worth of his company’s shares earlier this month.

Despite recent suggestions from the likes of Swiss Re that capital markets will increasingly bear the burden of large-scale risk, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) believes the securitisation market is serving as a complementary form of risk transfer, and not a sub

Rating agency Fitch has assigned Insurer Financial Strength (IFS) ratings to six Japanese life insurance companies.

AXA Re Property and Casualty Company (AXA Re P&C) became the first ratings casualty of the trio of storms hitting the South Eastern corner of the United States as AM Best revealed today (20 September) its decision to downgrade the reinsurer’s financial st

Ratings agency AM Best has affirmed its syndicate rating of "A" (Excellent) and issuer credit rating (ICR) of “a+” on Hardy Syndicate 382, both ratings issued with a stable outlook.

Evidence of continuing hard market conditions came with last week's interims from Lloyd's specialist insurer Hiscox which revealed record operating profits of £61.7mn, an increase of 134 percent.

But third major US hurricane in a month avoids New Orleans; creates lower than predicted loss scenario An energetic storm season continued unabated last week with the landfall of Hurricane Ivan, the third major hurricane to hit the US in the space of

The embattled Swiss based reinsurer Converium revealed last week that Berkshire Hathaway unit National Indemnity Company and Munich Re will providing fronting insurance for its 27.25 percent share of the Global Aerospace aviation pool.

Following on from last month’s 25 percent share price fall on news of deterioration from its run-off US legacy exposures, Lloyd’s insurer SVB released mixed results in its latest interims.

A difficult year for motor specialist Cox continued last week with a set of interims that saw a halving of pre-tax profits to £13.7mn from £28.3mn for the same period in 2003.

Chaucer Underwriting became the latest Lloyd’s insurer to celebrate the recent, strong underwriting conditions by posting a 32 percent increase in pre-tax profits to £18.8mn for the first half of the year.

“Continuing positive market conditions” have helped Catlin Group almost double its net income from $50.7mn to $95.8mn in its first ever interims as a public company.