Monday, November 19, 2007

Allianz Successfully Closes Catastrophe Bond Transaction. And: Green Insurance

Two stories on Allianz that caught my eye.
From easyBourse:

German insurance company Allianz SE (AZ) said Monday it has successfully closed its first catastrophe bond transaction related to windstorm risks in seven European countries.
Issued through Blue Fin Ltd., a Cayman Islands based special purpose entity, the bond has two tranches with an aggregate volume of EUR200 million and constitutes the first series under a program with an initial maximum size of EUR1 billion....

And from Xinhua:
Allianz launches "green" insurance to fund renewable energy project in China
A German driver could invest a renewable energy plant in northern China's prairie by voluntarily purchasing a carbon dioxide certificate from Allianz car insurance.

Part of the fund collected from such German drivers went to a biomass-fired power plant in Wushen Banner, Inner Mongolia. The plant, costing 241 million yuan (32.1 million U.S. dollars) in investment, will use 199,200 tons of desert bushes annually to generate electricity and supply heat for local industry.

The cost of a certificate depends on the type of vehicle, mileage driven per year, and the current price of mitigation certificates on the world market. A carbon dioxide certificate for a Volkswagon Passat driven 11,000 kilometers a year, for example, is about 37 euros, which allows a client to neutralize a car's carbon dioxide emissions for a year.

This is the latest drive of the Munich-headquartered insurance giant Allianz to help mitigate bad effects resulting from climate change....MORE