Travelers Establishes Multi-Year Catastrophe Bond Program

The Travelers Companies, Inc. has set up a multi-year catastrophe bond program to provide reinsurance protection for its insurance subsidiaries for losses resulting from hurricanes and certain other catastrophes in the U.S.

Travelers may obtain reinsurance under the program by entering into one or more reinsurance agreements with Longpoint Re Ltd., a newly formed independent Cayman Islands insurance company.

Longpoint Re successfully completed an offering to unrelated investors under the program of $500 million aggregate principal amount of catastrophe bonds on May 8, 2007. In connection with the offering, Travelers and Longpoint Re entered into a three-year reinsurance agreement providing up to $500 million of reinsurance from losses resulting from certain hurricane events in the northeastern United States, according to the companies.

Amounts payable under the reinsurance agreement will be based on an index created by applying predetermined percentages to insured industry losses in each state in the covered area as reported by Property Claim Services, a division of Insurance Services Offices, Inc. Payments to Travelers under the reinsurance agreement will be based on index-based losses, which are designed to approximate Travelers’ actual losses from any covered event. The principal amount of the catastrophe bonds will be reduced by any amounts paid to Travelers under the reinsurance agreement.

Travelers will be entitled to begin recovering amounts under the reinsurance agreement if the index-based losses in the covered area for a single occurrence reach an initial trigger amount of $2.25 billion. The full coverage amount of $500 million is available on a proportional basis until index-based losses reach an initial exhaustion amount of $3.0 billion. The trigger and exhaustion amounts will be reset annually to maintain a probability of loss on the catastrophe bonds equal to the initial modeled probability of loss.

Source:
www.travelers.com