Trading Risk July 2017

Nephila Capital has agreed a deal with a major US insurer to assume coastal exposure, broadening its access to primary risk, sister publication The Insurance Insider reported

Axis Capital CEO Albert Benchimol said the carrier could look to share more property cat risk with third-party capital providers after its $604mn acquisition of Lloyd's insurer Novae

Florida Citizens bought more collateralised reinsurance for the current hurricane season than it had in 2016, after lifting the size of its traditional programme by more than 50 percent.

Reinsurance and retro buyers obtained further rate reductions at the 1 July renewals, although Australian catastrophe losses led to isolated price increases.

RenaissanceRe and Swiss Re remained the two biggest carriers on the $1bn reinsurance programme bought by the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF) in 2017.

European ILS sponsors and arrangers need to weigh up a number of considerations as they consider alternative collateral arrangements, write Robert Cannon and Matt Feig at Cadwalader.

Ascot Group has appointed former RenaissanceRe CEO Neill Currie as executive chairman, noting that he had a mandate to expand the company through organic growth, strategic investments and acquisitions.

PGGM has recruited Youssef Sfaif to join its ILS investment management team. He joins the firm from Scor, where he spent the past two years as an actuary.

Guy Carpenter has appointed Tom Hettinger to lead its capital, structured risk, growth and rating agency operations in the US and Canada.

Brian Ingle will lead the analytics team for Willis Re North America following Alice Underwood's appointment as head of risk consulting and software.

TransRe has promoted Kyle Rhodes to the new role of global head of business development, where he will offer clients assistance in accessing third party capital.

The ILS portfolio managed by Swedish state pension fund AP3 grew by more than 40 percent in the second half of 2016, according to its most recent report