Julian Alovisi, Assistant Vice President, Instrat®
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A record-setting Atlantic hurricane season and above-average manmade catastrophe losses put 2008 among the costliest years on record. While the economic downturn dominated the headlines throughout the year, lurking in the shadows was one of the most active hurricane seasons on record. Hurricanes Ike and Gustav, combined with other weather-related events and several large manmade catastrophe losses, triggered insured losses of USD50 billion in 2008.[1] Although weather-related events remained the largest source of losses (USD43 billion in total), several manmade catastrophic events triggered insured losses of USD7 billion, significantly higher than the annual average of USD4.8 billion.

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Gary Venter, Managing Director, Instrat®
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Property catastrophes make the news. Tangible and visual, the carnage can be conveyed with ease, and all can grasp the direct implications immediately. Yet for (re)insurers, there’s another type of catastrophe that could be far more destructive to balance sheets. This threat, which can remain hidden in a portfolio for decades, can arise with little warning and have profound consequences.

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Reinsurer Diversification: The Guy Carpenter Model: Instrat®, Guy Carpenter’s quantitative services unit, has developed a reinsurer credit model.

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Reinsurer Diversification: Roots and Benefits: Cedents are becoming increasingly concerned about the security of their reinsurers, particularly in light of the global financial catastrophe.

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Chart: GC Reinsurance Composite: Earning Sources at Nine Months: With the majority of Guy Carpenter Reinsurance Composite members’ third quarter results now reported, some clear trends have emerged.

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Get Credit for Your ECM with S&P: S&P has released a new framework for determining whether a carrier’s own ECM can receive partial credit in the S&P capital adequacy evaluation.

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Book Value Update, Nov 17, 2008: As publicly traded (re)insurers continue to report their third quarter results, the impact of the ongoing financial catastrophe is becoming more noticeable.

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Most Popular Keyword: asset impairment

And, you may have missed …

2008 Reinsurance Readers’ Awards: Your vote counts. Click here to participate in the 2008 Reinsurance magazine Readers’ Awards survey.

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Christopher Klein, Global Head of Business Intelligence
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Instrat®, Guy Carpenter’s quantitative services unit, has developed a reinsurer credit model. It allows an analyst to input a mixture of reinsurers and measure the impact of the diversification effect. The model allows for the specification of correlation levels for reinsurer defaults. It also allows for the chance of partial recoveries.

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Tropical Cyclone Review 2007 summarises the season’s tropical cyclones and the impact of the more significant cyclones after landfall. Tropical cyclone activity is reviewed by oceanic basin, covering those that developed in the North Atlantic, Northeast Pacific, Northwest Pacific, Australian and North and South Indian Ocean basins. This report includes an estimation of the economic and insured losses sustained from each cyclone (where possible). Predictions of tropical cyclone activity for the 2008 season are given per oceanic basin when permitted by available data.

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