Industry Insights

Options strategies offer premiums for insuring against financial market risks. Joseph Mariathasan looks at strategies that attempt to collect these while protecting against the worst of the tail risks. Seeking income is a challenge in a world where 10-year government bond yields are barely above 2% in the US and UK, and less in Germany.

The peak perils of hurricane and earthquake receive the most attention when catastrophe risk gets transferred in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market. However, non-peak perils can contribute risk to ILS investments that may be difficult to quantify and easy to overlook. This is one reason why proprietary analysis is critical in this space. “The recent

New mandate targets riskier tranches of investments with higher return potential. Elementum Advisors, a leading alternative investment manager specializing in collateralized natural catastrophe event reinsurance investments, today announced it has launched a new mandate with a large institutional investor focused on collateralized reinsurance investments (CRI) with a higher risk and return profile. Leveraging Elementum’s established

Insurance-Linked Securities (“ILS”) are securities and derivatives that transfer catastrophic natural event risk from insurers and reinsurers to capital markets investors. Fundamentally, the market is predicated on investors assuming losses from natural catastrophes on behalf of insurance companies, in exchange for a risk premium. The ILS market emerged in the mid-1990s, following Hurricane Andrew and

Exploring the evolution of the insurance-linked securities market (ILS) and examining the role of specific instruments in an investor’s portfolio. Interviewer – Steve Evans: Owner and Editor, Artemis.bmInterviewee – Tony Rettino: Founding Principal and Portfolio Manager, Elementum Advisors Steve Evans: What would you say to those questioning the sustainability of insurance-linked securities (ILS) instruments and

It is not always easy to tell what someone means when they talk about ‘insurance-linked investments’ – but distinctions are imperative because the various components of this complex market present very different risk and return profiles. Let us take the most commonly-used term – ‘insurance-linked securities’. Often shortened to ‘ILS’, this is what most investors

Investors cannot get enough of the catastrophe bond market, writes Charlotte Moore, but the potential for equilibrium, albeit at lower returns, is there. The global financial crisis highlighted the advantages of investing in catastrophe bonds to the pensions industry. All other risk assets proved to be strongly correlated in the turmoil but these insurance-linked securities,

Reinsurance risk is clearly diversifying against pension funds’ core financial market risks. But Martin Steward writes on the importance of defining objectives beyond simple diversification when investing in this asset class. You may have heard that Warren Buffett has bought a big chunk of Heinz. Berkshire Hathaway’s stake consisted of about $4bn in ordinary shares