Making a Market for Acts of God


Book Description

Reinsurance is a market that provides cover for the devastating consequences of unpredictable events such as Hurricane Katrina, or the Tohoku earthquake, underpinning society's capacity to rebuild after the unthinkable happens. This book fleshes out how this important and quirky financial market works.




Making a Market for Acts of God


Book Description

Reinsurance is a financial market that trades in the risk of unpredictable and devastating disasters - such as Hurricane Katrina, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Such disasters are increasing in both frequency and severity, with the cost of their losses mounting rapidly. Reinsurance insures insurance companies, enabling them to pay claims arising from these losses. It is thus a market mechanism that is a critical part of the social and economic safety net, helping to pick up the pieces after disasters. Yet, how is the risk of such disasters calculated and traded in a global market? This book brings to life the reinsurance market through vivid real-life tales that draw from an ethnographic, "fly-on-the-wall" study of the global reinsurance industry over three annual cycles. The authors shadowed underwriters around the world as they traded risks through multiple disasters. For instance, this book takes readers into the desperate hours of pricing Japanese risks during March 2011, while the devastating aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake is unfolding. To show how the market works, the book offers authentic tales gathered from observations of reinsurers in Bermuda, Lloyd's of London, Continental Europe and SE Asia as they evaluate, price and compete for different risks as part of their everyday practice. Understanding how this market for disasters works has never been more critical given the impact of climate change and increased global connectivity, where a flood in one country can trigger losses to supply chains around the world. The authors develop a novel concept of how global markets work, which advances scholarship and challenges current thinking about how financial markets trade in intangible assets such as risk. This book will be useful to readers interested in markets for disasters, insurance, reinsurance and financial markets, and academics interested in the practice of financial markets specifically or the practice of strategy and organizations generally.




Handbook of International Insurance


Book Description

Handbook of International Insurance: Between Global Dynamics and Local Contingencies analyzes key trends in the insurance industry in more than 15 important national insurance markets that represent over 90 percent of world insurance premiums. Well-known academics from Europe, the Americas and Asia examine their own national insurance markets, including the competitive structure, product and service innovations, and regulatory developments. The book provides academics and executives with an unprecedented range of information about today’s insurance markets. This book also provides important 'new' information on the evolution of the financial sector worldwide and comprehensive chapters on reinsurance, Lloyd’s of London, alternative risk transfer, South and East Asian insurance markets, and European insurance markets. Setting the stage is an overview chapter by the editors focusing on overall conclusions on globalization.




Alternative Risk Transfer


Book Description

A practical approach to ART-an alternative method by which companies take on various types of risk This comprehensive book shows readers what ART is, how it can be used to mitigate risk, and how certain instruments/structures associated with ART should be implemented. Through numerous examples and case studies, readers will learn what actually works and what doesn't when using this technique. Erik Banks (CT) joined XL Capital's weather/energy risk management subsidiary, Element Re, as a Partner and Chief Risk Officer in 2001.




The Value of Risk


Book Description

Reinsurance is an invisible service industry which enables insurance companies to insure more risks and to make better use of their resources. Until recently, reinsurers were only known to a small minority outside the insurance community. Major disasters, especially those caused by natural catastrophes, have increasingly brought the industry into the spotlight. Yet what is perceived today by a wider public still only represents a fraction of the industry, and the mechanisms of reinsurance to deal with global risk exposure are virtually unknown. The Value of Risk provides an overview of how today's reinsurance industry developed. It investigates for the first time the role of reinsurers in a changing risk, economic, and market environment. Harold James explains the fundamental principles of insuring and outlines the evolution of the industry in his introductory essay. In Part I, Peter Borscheid describes in detail the global spread of modern insurance, which emerged in the late eighteenth century amidst ideas of rationalism which attempted to quantify risk in monetary terms, the setbacks it encountered, and how the market environment changed over time. Professional reinsurance emerged with the rise in insured risks in the industrialising mid-nineteenth century. By the time the San Francisco Earthquake happened in 1906 the reinsurance industry had become well established and showed a remarkable ability to deal collectively with the catastrophe. David Gugerli describes in Part II how the industry as a whole dealt with such challenges but also the numerous exposures to a changing risk landscape. Against this background, in Part III Tobias Straumann examines the history of the Swiss Reinsurance Company, founded in 1863, providing a fascinating example of how professional risk taking was developed over the last 150 years.




Insurance Linked Securities


Book Description

Securitisations of insurance risk as new methods of risk transfer have been emerging in the global financial market during the recent twenty years. Christoph Weber analyses the techniques of traditional methods in comparison with securitisations for life- and non-life insurance risk.




Insurance and Issues in Financial Soundness


Book Description

This paper explores insurance as a source of financial system vulnerability. It provides a brief overview of the insurance industry and reviews the risks it faces, as well as several recent failures of insurance companies that had systemic implications. Assimilation of banking-type activities by life insurers appears to be the key systemic vulnerability. Building on this experience and the experience gained under the FSAP, the paper proposes key indicators that should be compiled and used for surveillance of financial soundness of insurance companies and the insurance sector as a whole.




Role of Reinsurance in the World


Book Description

This book is an edited collection by leading insurance historians, examining the historical role of reinsurance (the insurance of insurers) in the insurance markets of eight countries: USA, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy, Mexico and Japan. All the contributors are experts in their field and have widely published in insurance history, providing the reader with new insights into the insurance and economic history of these countries. In particular, this is the first book to explore the reinsurance markets in the USA, Netherlands, France, Italy and Mexico. This book will be of interest to economic and business historians, as well as insurance practitioners with an interest in the history of their industry.




Intermediation in Reinsurance Markets


Book Description

Reinsurance cover can either be purchased directly or via an intermediating reinsurance broker. The importance of reinsurance brokers has increased steadily since the early nineties. The thesis thus aims to analyze the impact of the reinsurance broker on reinsurance market efficiency and to identify the reasons why primary insurers to an increasing extent contract via an intermediating reinsurance broker. As the reinsurance broker's intermediation services are costly for the primary, intermediation needs to increase the primary insurer's payoff or utility compared to the direct purchase of reinsurance cover. Otherwise, no primary would be willing to hire a broker firm for assistance in the reinsurance acquisition process. Chapter II clarifies the framework for reinsurance broker activity. Chapter III first gives an overview of the reinsurance broker market (III.2) with a special focus on the market concentration and the geographical importance of reinsurance brokers. In addition, the reinsurance broker's tasks before, during, and after the reinsurance contract conclusion (III.3) are introduced and the types of reinsurance broker remuneration frequently used (III.4) are outlined. Finally, the most prominent reinsurance broker regulatory frameworks (III.5) are introduced along with rationales for reinsurance broker regulation. Chapter IV is composed of five sections discussing the different aspects of the market function of the reinsurance broker. Chapter V gives a short summary of the main findings and concludes the thesis. By combining economic theory and market observations, this thesis addresses both scholars and reinsurance market specialists. Rückversicherung kann entweder direkt oder über einen vermittelnden Rückversicherungsmakler erworben werden. Die Bedeutung der Rückversicherungsmakler hat seit Anfang der 1990er Jahre international zugenommen. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser Entwicklung untersucht die Autorin die Effizienz des Rückversicherungsmarktes und die Gründe, warum Erstversicherer in zunehmendem Maße Rückversicherung über einen vermittelnden Rückversicherungsmakler abschließen. Kapitel II klärt die Rahmenbedingungen für das Tätigwerden der Rückversicherungsmakler. Kapitel III gibt zunächst einen Überblick über den Rückversicherungsmakler-Markt (III.2) mit einem besonderen Fokus auf die Marktkonzentration und die geographische Verteilung der Rückversicherungsmakler. Darüber hinaus werden die Aufgaben der Rückversicherungsmakler vor, während und nach dem Vertragsabschluss (III.3) vorgestellt und die häufigsten Arten der Vergütung (III.4) behandelt. Schließlich werden die wichtigsten Regelwerke für Rückversicherungsmakler (III.5) erläutert. Kapitel IV befasst sich detailliert mit verschiedenen Aspekten des Rückversicherungsmarktes und der Funktion der Broker. Kapitel V fasst die Ergebnisse kurz zusammen. Die Autorin verbindet ökonomische Theorie mit Marktbeobachtungen und leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zu einem wenig erforschten Themengebiet. Die Arbeit richtet sich sowohl an Wissenschaftler als auch an die im Rückversicherungsmarkt tätigen Spezialisten.