I think there is a decent probability that they under reserved deliberately.
On the closed-end funds market, there were two vehicles to invest in Cat bonds/ILS : Catco and Blue Capital Alternative Income. Last year, after all the events, BCAI was very quick to take a significant loss. That led to the shares trading much below NAV and an activist fund took a position to force the winding down of the fund. Catco was much slower to book losses. With the new year they even pitched for a new vehicle (with the usual spiel "those catastrophes will lead to improved pricing" that anybody reading artemis blog knew was not true). That's only after the new vehicle ended its sucessful fundraising that the old vehicle started to book significant losses. This behaviour smells of foul play.
Interesting take theLiberties.
Would be interested also in your factual or reasoning process.
-When looking at the loss creep for Hurricane Irma for instance, most participants have disclosed progressively higher losses in relation to what cedants report.
-The ILS market has been incredibly competitive with only temporary and mild price increases for Florida wind (despite Irma's poor development patterns) early in 2018 followed by essentially flat prices, suggesting that there is competitive pressure that could impact underwriting discipline or conservatism.
-Poor discipline is worrisome but different from what you describe and obviously requires a different approach from head office. Deliberate fudging can be explained (but not justified) when the firm faces survival issues but why would one deliberately use wrong assumptions only for temporary benefits in terms of market share as investors will invariably switch ILS funds or even go back to traditional channels when poor results show up?
