Flood risk routinely underestimated, warns Marsh & McLennan Company (MMC)
Re/insurance broker Marsh McLennan has released its updated Flood Risk Index 2.0, which maps how a changing climate will shape flood risk in the future. The report warns that flooding is the most pervasive natural disaster, and yet its costs are routinely underestimated. And now, climate change, economic and demographic trends, and a chronic shortfall […]
UK Disaster Protection Centre: Humanitarian Insurance: Weighing the Options
Through the previous blogs in this series, we have started to unpick the role for risk transfer in a humanitarian context, and raised some of the ethical, practical, and principle-based reasons why humanitarian actors might think twice before using risk transfer tools like insurance [1]. The obvious next question for humanitarian actors and donors is […]
Global Insurance-Linked Securities Market Outlook
The Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS) market ended another year on a high note as the annual new issuance record was broken once again. This milestone was achieved in spite of a challenging year of catastrophe losses and with most market participants working from home. The ILS market continues to demonstrate its resilience with bonds issued in […]
Caribbean regional cat bond planned with World Bank support
Work is underway to develop a catastrophe bond for the Caribbean region with the support of the World Bank, with four countries currently engaged and as many as four others thought likely to join the effort. The initiative hopes to have a multi-country or regional Caribbean catastrophe bond ready for market by the time Jamaica’s […]
Climate change a far greater threat to global economy than Covid-19 pandemic amid rising intensity of heatwaves and floods, Swiss Re says
Climate change poses a bigger risk to long-term global economic growth than the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, according to Swiss Re. The world just had the third warmest June on record last month, with the average temperature 0.32 degrees Celsius higher than the average for the month in the three decades to 2020, according to Europe’s […]
Humanitarian insurance – ethical tightropes, trade-offs and unintended consequences
Insurance can be a useful tool for managing the unpredictable costs of disasters. This seems a good fit for a sector whose core business is responding to the human impacts of disasters, and often struggles to find the resources to meet unexpected peaks in demand. But humanitarians have a number of particularities linked to their […]
Disaster Risk Financing could help to mitigate climate risk in Africa
Only three percent of losses caused by drought, floods and tropical cyclones have been insured on the African continent. This emerged at a recent DZ BANK Capital Markets Conference held in Berlin. Insured losses on the African continent are close to 97 percent, which means, at best, only three percent of losses caused by drought, floods […]
Madagascar gets ARC parametric drought insurance payout as well
The country of Madagascar is the latest to benefit from a payout under its parametric drought insurance coverage from the African Risk Capacity (ARC), with almost $800k to be disbursed to the government. The African Risk Capacity Group and the African Development Bank presented the Government of Madagascar with a US $797,049 cheque as an […]
Novel cat bonds on the horizon: Brad Adderley, Appleby
On the back of a robust opening quarter, catastrophe bond issuance remained strong in the second-quarter of 2022, and with interest from new sponsors with novel transactions, growth could be on the horizon, according to Brad Adderley. “We have done a fair amount of cat bonds in Q2, and we have not had any transactions […]
“Demand for catastrophe bonds outpacing industry’s ability to meet them” – Aon
Aon’s latest Reinsurance Market Dynamics: June and July Reinsurance Renewals says that the current demand for catastrophe bonds is outpacing the ability of the industry to supply them. According to the report, the current situation has arisen because insurers and reinsurers have turned increasingly to alternative capital markets to supplement traditional reinsurance and maximise placements in a […]