Hurricane

RenaissanceRe and Swiss Re are in line to write more than half of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF)'s $1bn maiden cat reinsurance placement, sister publication The Insurance Insider reported

Institutional investors will continue to broaden their appetite for diversifying risk and the reinsurance markets will attract an ever-wider investor base, Michael Millette told an audience at the annual Insider New York event.

Florida Citizens' board of governors has approved plans for a $3.9bn risk transfer package for the 2015 hurricane season, as the organisation plans to add to its aggregate reinsurance arrangements to cover multiple storms.

Central American countries can now formally join CCRIF, formerly known as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, after the catastrophe insurance pool signed a memorandum of understanding with the Council of Ministers of Finance of Central America, Panama and the Dominican Republic (Cosefin).

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Florida's State Board of Administration (SBA) has approved the state's cat fund and its broker Aon Benfield to go ahead with a $1bn risk transfer to the private reinsurance market at prices that are heading to "historic lows".

The residual insurance pools for the states of Texas and Massachusetts have both returned to the cat bond market with new transactions ahead of the 2015 hurricane season.

Aon Benfield Securities CEO Paul Schultz said that innovative transactions are helping to drive the success of the ILS market after cat bond issuance for the first three months of the year reached a record $1.7bn.

Karen Clarke & Company (KCC) has warned that an increase in concentration of property value in the US means that a large magnitude event in certain areas would be multiples of the PMLs that the insurance industry has been using to manage risk.

Colorado State University (CSU) scientists Philip Klotzbach and William Gray said that the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season could be one of the least active since the middle of the 20th century.

Aon Benfield said that demand for reinsurance cover is set to increase at the key mid-year renewals as it said that one emerging trend might see buyers replacing expiring ILS transactions with traditional reinsurance options.