UK-based insurer Amlin is to buy Fortis Corporate Insurance NV (FCI) from the Netherlands state for €350m ($500m). FCI provides corporate p/c business and risk management solutions in the Netherlands and Belgium, with headquarters in Amstelveen and offices in Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels and Paris. It generates 63% of its premiums in the Netherlands and 36% from Belgium. Gross written premiums were €763m in 2008, with net earned premiums of €569m generating a technical loss of minus €11m and a post-tax loss of €31m. This compared with a technical gain of €26m and a post-tax profit of €40m the year before. Amlin said that the poor result in 2008 “reflects a number of challenges faced during the period, including a softening rating environment, an unusually high frequency of large claims, investment losses in the Company’s equity and bond portfolios, and the nationalization of the Fortis Group’s Dutch entities”. Amlin was confident that recent and future developments would “provide the foundation for a return to historical levels of profitability”. Nearly half of FCI’s business is Marine, while Property makes up just over 20%. Liability (15%), Fleet Motor (8%) and “Other” (principally captives, 7%) make up the remainder of the company’s operations. In an interview with Dow Jones, Amlin CEO Charles Philipps said that adding this business would help Amlin become less exposed to catastrophe business, and that profit from non-cat business could help fund organic growth in the catastrophe sector. Meanwhile, Amlin has announced the placing of 23.5m shares, representing about 5% of Amlin’s share capital, to be used as part-funding for the acquisition. The placing price will be decided at the close of an accelerated Bookbuild. Amlin’s share price in early morning trade was down 15p to 323.5p, in a slightly falling market.

Bermudian insurer/reinsurer RenaissanceRe Holdings. has formed Timicuan Reinsurance II Ltd as a new Bermudian reinsurer to provide reinsurance capacity for the Florida homeowners’ insurance market with the approach of the renewal season. RenRe is to cede to Tim Re II a defined portfolio of property catastrophe business, primarily hurricane-related business written for Florida insurers for the storm season that started on Monday. Tim Re II has initial equity capital of $60m, with $10m invested by RenRe. Aon Benfield Securities acted as lead placement agent in raising capital for the new company.

An improvement in the prospects for selling on the municipal bond market was a factor in the increases at the June 1 renewals being at the lower end of predictions, according to a release from global broker Aon Benfield. The broker estimated that Florida cat reinsurance rates rose by between 10% and 15% at the June 1 renewals, at the mid- to lower-end of previous predictions. Aon Benfield Analytics CEO Bryon Ehrhart said that “despite the significant turmoil in the financial markets since last June, reinsurers maintained the core capital necessary to renew Florida-influenced reinsurance programmes at rates that remain accretive to insurers’ cost of capital and earnings”. The broker observed that insurers continued to be concerned that “the significant loss reimbursements anticipated from Florida’s catastrophe fund (FHCF) may not be fully available or made on a timely basis”. The FHCF is providing $29bn of capacity this season and is relying on liquidity in the municipal bond markets if a serious storm should strike. Anticipating the US risk renewals on July 1, Aon Benfield projected capacity in complex commercial lines at between stable and minus 10%, with rates rising between 5% and 25%. In standard commercial lines business, the broker saw capacity ranging from stable to minus 5%, with rate increases of between 5% and 20%. Outside the US, Aon Benfield is predicting roughly stable capacity, with rate increases of 0% to 5%. There were variations in Australasia and the Asia-Pacific, with non-Japanese Asia-Pacific possibly seeing reductions in rates of up to 5%, while in Japan and Australia there could be increases of up to 10%, the broker said.

Insurance Australia Group (IAG) said today that it expects to pay between AUD25m and AUD35m ($20.2m to $28.3m) in claims as a result of the recent storms in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales. IAG said that its CGU and NRMA subsidiaries had received about 4,000 claims by today, most of them related to damage to property. The storms will not incur sufficient losses to trigger IAG’s AUD75m reinsurance layer, but they would contribute to IAG’s aggregate cover. IAG said that it had reinsurance for AUD150m for aggregate events over AUD150m