The diploma thesis deals with the possibilities of applying weather derivatives and catastrophe bonds as alternative risk transfer products, which enable to cope with natural disaster risk in the Czech Republic. The author highlights an obvious increase in occurrence and intensity of extreme climate events resulting into devastating floods. Total costs caused by floods in August 2002, which hadn't been known so far, had important impact on the Czech insurance market. The situation is in many aspects similar to circumstances, which led to the birth of ART products abroad. If the recent tendencies continue, Czech insurers will have to find new ways of dealing with these risks beside the traditional commercial insurance. In accordance with conclusions of this thesis, applying of catastrophe bonds isn't supposed in the future. However, the weather derivatives seem to be an alternative with great potential.

Climate change is an undisputable fact. However it has not been found out yet with certainty what role does the human activity play and how is climate change influenced by nature cycles. A major role play greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere. These gases are linked to various issues, one of them being the global warming. In order to reduce the amount of emitted greenhouse gases, various conferences on climate change took place. During meetings participants have been trying to find a solution for gradual reducing level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate change will probably result in more severe natural catastrophes, according to renowned scientists. Most probably there will be a rising occurrence of tropical cyclones, severe droughts or a change in rain precipitation throughout the world. Future predictions are not clear yet and there is still no common agreement among scientists about how the future developments will be. However there is a clear increasing trend in the amount of insured losses, economic losses and the number of catastrophic events, which influences insurance industry. This trend could be caused by more elements, including increasing insurance penetration, increasing concentration of economic values or increasing migration into hazard zones. Climate change can also be partly to blame for the negative developments of insured losses and therefore insurance industry should play a major role in an effort to assess possible future risks in order to decrease its vulnerability to future risk developments. Indemnity rise makes insurance companies and the whole industry more vulnerable to insolvency and thus new ways to diversify risks are being searched for. Cooperation between public and private sector is one of the solutions which help to make almost uninsurable risks insurable. However, there are still risks that are almost unbearable by cooperation of these two sectors. Alternative risk transfer to capital market is one of solutions for mitigating the possibility of huge future losses. In the process of an alternative risk transfer, investors are participating in catastrophe risk development through e.g. catastrophe bonds. Bonds give investors an opportunity to further diversify their portfolio and receive an attractive yield in return to an exposure to a risk of a big catastrophe loss which could result in installment cut, installment annulment or even principal annulment depending on the severity of the catastrophe. Through these risk transfer methods catastrophe losses of huge extents can be spread to more parties, helping to decrease the risk of default of parties and thus increasing the probability of liabilities settlement.

Life re-insurers are exposed to mortality catastrophe risk. Mortality CAT bonds are a tool that can mitigate this risk. However, a key disadvantage of this tool is the existence of population basis risk, which occurs whenever there are differences between reference and insured populations. In this thesis, we propose a method to measure population basis risk of mortality CAT bonds. We consider a fictitious mortality CAT bond based on the mortality rates of two regional populations. We first obtain mortality change indexes by calibrating the MBMM model on these two regional populations. Then we use copula-based semi-parametric models to simulate the serial dependence and interdependence structure simultaneously between two regional mortality change indexes. Finally, we analyze the hedge effectiveness of the bond, from which we are able to quantify the population basis risk. We find that population basis risk decreases under certain circumstances.

This master thesis discusses the niche of reinsurance business -- catastrophe bonds. It provides a brief description of reinsurance in general, insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bonds. The goal of this thesis is to describe the development of cat bond market and the influence of economic and natural shocks on it. In order to analyze the effect, quarter issuance data are used together with Swiss Re Cat Bonds return indexes. In addition, several other variables (i.e. Munich Re and Swiss Re stock prices) and indexes are used. The most important indexes are Merrill Lynch high yield bonds and structured products. The shocks' influence is examined by analyzing the correlation between cat bonds yields and other financial instruments. The conclusion of the thesis is that during economic boom cat bonds are correlated with other instruments. In times of recession cat bonds' yields prove to be negatively or not correlated with other negatively affected instrument.

For a little over twenty years, the niched asset class catastrophe bonds have existed. Despite of their now relatively long existence, they are still unknown to many and are usually only available for large, institutional investors, mainly within the insurance market, pension funds and hedge funds. Catastrophe bonds differ from traditional assets for many reason, the main one being the risk dependent of a predetermined event within a geographic area, such as an earthquake in Tokyo or a hurricane in Miami. Because the risk is dependent of other factors than traditional asset classes, there is a widespread knowledge of the possibilities to diversify the portfolio by investing in catastrophe bonds, which have a low covariance with other assets in the portfolio. Other asset classes who have similar characteristics have proved to be hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure and agriculture. The lack of competence some people have worried about investors have to be able to invest in these niched asset classes have been found to be relevant for all asset classes, not just these non-traditional assets. Also, it is always difficult to know when an investor is taking more risk than they are being compensated for, moreover this is individual for all investors. Lastly, catastrophe bonds contribute with public welfare in addition to the economic advantage; catastrophe bonds show low volatility and high returns while raising capital to help regions affected by natural catastrophes. / I drygt tjugo år har nu det speciella tillgångsslaget katastrofobligationer funnits, trots detta är det relativt okänt och anses vara en investering endast för de stora aktörerna inom främst försäkringsbranschen, pensionsfonder och hedgefonder. Katastrofobligationer skiljer sig från traditionella tillgångsslag av en rad anledningar, den främsta för att risken beror på en fördefinierad händelse inom ett geografiskt område, såsom en jordbävning i Tokyo eller en orkan i Miami. Tack vare att risken beror på andra faktorer än klassiska tillgångsslag finns en bred vetskap inom branschen att detta är ett enkelt sätt för att skapa diversifiering i portföljen och katastrofobligationer har låg samvariation med övriga tillgångar i portföljen. Andra tillgångsslag som har liknande egenskaper och också skapar diversifiering har visat sig vara hedgefonder, fastigheter, infrastruktur och jordbruk. Det kan konstateras att det är svårt att avgöra om det faktiskt föreligger en kunskapsbrist för specifikt katastrofobligationer eller om detta gäller tillgångar, likväl som det ofta är en subjektiv bedömning ifall den risk som tas också blir kompenserad tillräckligt. Slutligen bidrar obligationerna med en viss samhällsnytta utöver den ekonomiska nyttan, katastrofobligationer uppvisar låg volatilitet och hög avkastning samtidigt som att de frigör kapital för katastrofdrabbade områden.

When society fails to effectively integrate natural and constructed environments, one of the cataclysmic byproducts of this disconnect is an increased risk of natural disasters. On top of the devastation that is the aftermath of such disasters, poor planning and engineering decisions have detrimental effects on communities as they attempt to recover and rebuild. While there is an inherent difficulty in the quantification of the cost of human life, interruption in business operations, and damage to the properties, it is critical to develop plans and mitigation strategies to promote fast recovery. Traditionally insurance and reinsurance products have been used as a mitigation strategy for financing post-disaster recovery. However, there are number of problems associated with these models such as lack of liquidity, defaults, long litigation process, etc. In light of these problems, new Alternative Risk Transfer (ART) methods are introduced. The pricing of these risk mitigating instruments, however, has been mostly associated with the hazard frequency and intensity; and little recognition is made of the riskiness of the structure to be indemnified. This study proposes valuation models for catastrophe-linked ART products and insurance contracts in which the risks and value can be linked to the characteristics of the insured portfolio of constructed assets. The results show that the supply side ? structural parameters are as important as the demand ? hazard frequency, and are in a highly nonlinear relationship with financial parameters such as risk premiums and spreads.

Les pertes de rendement dues au climat sont positivement corrélées. Cela va à l’encontre des principes d’assurance et expose l’assureur à des risques financiers qu’il ne peut supporter seul. Les réassureurs eux-mêmes peuvent être dépassés par les sommes en jeu. Les marchés financiers en revanche possèdent la capacité financière requise et l’effet diversifiant des risques climatiques pourraient intéresser les investisseurs. Une stratégie de gestion du risque systémique consistant pour l’assureur à isoler la partie corrélée du risque rendement et à la transférer aux marchés financiers via des obligations catastrophe est analysée en trois points. Tout d’abord, des modèles de tarification isolant la part systémique du risque sont présentés. Ensuite, la démonstration de la faible corrélation d’une obligation agricole est faite, ainsi que de ses rendements élevés, confirmant son potentiel pour les investisseurs. Enfin, l’évolution de la valeur de marché des compagnies émettrices d’obligations catastrophe est étudiée. Au global, aucun impact n’est détecté. En détail, des émissions répétées favorisent la hausse de la valeur de l’émetteur, et de grosses émissions en favorisent la baisse. Les assurances indicielles sont utilisées comme support de l’étude. Basées sur des proxys de rendement plutôt que sur des rendements réels, elles donnent accès à des bases de données complètes et fiables. Ces travaux contribuent à la littérature restreinte concernant les risques agricoles et leur transfert vers les marchés financiers. Ils fournissent aux assureurs une stratégie alternative de transfert de risque et ouvrent la voie vers des outils innovants d’investissement. / Crop yield insurance comes with loss correlation, impeding the classical insurance risk pooling. Insurers alone cannot face the high exposure entailed by weather risks, which can even fall beyond the reinsurers’ financial capacity. Financial markets appear as a logical risk-transfer solution, investors being potentially interested by the diversifying effect of weather-linked risks. A systemic risk management strategy consisting for the insurer to isolate the correlated component of the crop yield risk and to transfer it to the financial markets through catastrophe bonds is investigated in three points. First, insurance pricing models separating the risk into a systemic and a non-systemic component are presented. Second, the interest for investors to take part in a cat bond based on agricultural risks is analyzed. The low correlation to financial markets of such bonds and their potentially high returns confirm the attractiveness of this new asset class for investors. Finally, the evolution of the market value of cat bonds issuers is studied. No general evolution is identified, but firms used to issue cat bonds may expect their market value to increase, while the firms issuing the largest bonds may expect their market value to decrease. The study is applied to the case of index insurance, based on yield proxys rather than real yields, which provides detailed data for accurate risk quantification. This work contributes to the still limited literature regarding agricultural risks and insurance by describing an integrated systemic risk management strategy providing insurers with alternative risk-sharing solutions and investors with innovative asset allocation opportunities.