Here are the ten most popular news articles, week ending 15th March 2020, covering catastrophe bonds, ILS, reinsurance capital and related risk transfer topics.To ensure you never miss a thing or get our email alerts for every article we publish.Global insurance and reinsurance broker Aon has reached a definitive agreement to combine with rival broker Willis Towers Watson (WTW), in an all-stock transaction with an implied combined equity value of roughly $80 billion.

Catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) issuance is on course to break all records in the first-quarter of 2020, with a huge $3.93 billion of catastrophe risk-focused deals helping overall cat bond and related ILS issuance exceed $5 billion for the first time, according to Artemis’ data.There is a chance some carriers choose to exit certain parts of the reinsurance market if rates do not materially improve at the next sets of renewals in 2020, with some Lloyd’s players in particular finding property catastrophe underwriting uneconomical currently.Reinsurance renewals are expected to see significant increases in pricing in both April and June, but the biggest increases are expected to be in Japan, while Florida is likely to rise more than in recent years, but still at a slower pace.

While reinsurance rates have improved in the last year and are expected to improve further through 2020, the chances of a return to the “glory days of a robust non-life pricing environment” are seen as slim by rating agency A.M.Best.A new direct to consumer parametric earthquake insurance product has been launched for the Latin America market by Super Seguros Inc., with reinsurance backing from global player Munich Re.

The President of the World Bank Group David Malpass has highlighted the importance of financial preparation for pandemic emergencies, of the kind provided by the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF), which is backed by insurance including the now much-discussed World Bank issued pandemic catastrophe bonds.The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market continues to evolve in the wake of the major catastrophe losses of recent years and one of the most important and ongoing developments is the quest to front cedents as efficiently as possible, A.M.Best explains in a new report.

The collateralised reinsurance sidecar leaves a lot to be desired, speakers at a conference discussed recently, with the structure singled out as being cumbersome and inefficient, leading to an opportunity for anyone wanting to innovate and work to improve them.United States Federal agencies should explore and employ risk transfer from private markets, such as insurance, reinsurance and capital market solutions, to transfer risks that American taxpayers are exposed to, an amendment to a key budget document will now state.This is not every article published on Artemis during the last week, just the most popular, some of which were published over a week ago..

To ensure you always stay up to date with Artemis and never miss a story subscribe to our weekly email newsletter which is delivered every Wednesday.Get listed in our ...———————————————————————We’ve tracked more than 650 cat bonds and related ILS transactions since 1996, all of which are included in our extensive .