Hurricane

Platinum Underwriters renewed its $50mn retro cover from 1 July after letting it lapse in the first half of the year, the company said.

The unprecedented volume of cat bonds issued in the first half of 2014 highlighted structural convergence as much as pricing convergence with the traditional reinsurance market, Swiss Re Capital Markets said in its latest quarterly ILS report.

Q. When is the North Atlantic hurricane season peak?

Hurricane conditions are expected along the North Carolina coast tonight (3 July) as the first tropical storm of 2014 has been upgraded to hurricane status, according to bulletins from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).

The World Bank has confirmed the issuance of its inaugural catastrophe bond under the bank's newly-created Capital-at-Risk Notes Program, a platform that will allow the bank to expand its lending capacity.

The World Bank has issued its first catastrophe bond, a three-year $30mn bond providing quake and hurricane protection for the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF).

Florida's Citizens Property Insurance Corporation expects to reduce rates for almost 70 percent of its policyholders in 2015 as it has lowered its cost of capital by shrinking its portfolio and obtaining cheaper reinsurance rates.

Munich Re's latest Queen Street X cat bond has priced at the top end of guidance, although the book has still not closed and no indications of the deal's size have been given to investors, sources told Trading Risk.

The Alamo Re cat bond for the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) has closed at $400mn, the lowest end of revised pricing guidance, according to sources

The first two cat bonds to come to market after the hurricane season opened provided an indication of continued pressure on spreads.

As the property cat reinsurance market continues to soften, many state-backed US insurance pools are significantly expanding their levels of cover.

In this special project, Trading Risk worked with modelling agencies to highlight the range of expected loss outcomes from cascading annual aggregate cat bonds.