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eBenchmarkers - Financial Competitor Benchmarking
As the UK grapples with the growing Covid-19 pandemic, and the government’s response continues to escalate, eBenchmarkers and Oliver Wyman have worked together to assess the potential impact for P&C personal lines insurers over different time horizons, by examining trends from other markets and historically, and produced this short informational piece. This article looks at emerging trends from markets where the pandemic and responses are further progressed, and pulls historic eBenchmarkers data of the 2008-09 recession that followed the global financial crisis to aid the predictions found within the article. Article: 9 min read
Topic Industry News
IGM Credit, IGM FX and Rates
As Emerging Markets go into recession, EM policymakers have rapidly deployed a broad range of support measures with more to come, but it remains to be seen how effective these will be in mitigating the EM growth hit. As far as China is concerned, negative GDP growth in Q1 looks unavoidable. The most pessimistic estimate in the street is -9%. For the full-year GDP growth, the revised estimates in the street fall between +1% and +4%. In light of the gloomy economic outlook, Beijing definitely will step up stimulus. Now a cut in the benchmark deposit rate is on the cards, which could be a more meaningful means to boost retail consumption. With interest rates trending downward, onshore government bonds and policy bank bonds have kept rallying recently on the back of strong buy-and-hold demand (chart 1). The latest data suggests the China bond market saw USD11bn of net inflows from foreign investors in February, up from only USD2bn in January (chart 2). Among the paper which is already or being included in the major global government bond indices, policy bank bonds (PBBs) registered a bigger increase in foreign investors' portfolios than China Government Bonds (CGBs). Of the USD11bn of net inflows in February, USD5bn was taken by PBBs, USD4bn by CGBs with the remainder by negotiable certificates of deposit (NCDs) and medium-term notes (MTNs).
Topic Industry News
PSN Enterprise - Separate Account Analytics Software, Zephyr...
This week provided us with the first jaw-dropping release of economic data in the form of the historic jobless claims number and the Markit services flash PMI. Brace yourself for more of the same during the upcoming week as the coronavirus is sure to wreak havoc on the jobs report, jobless claims, PMIs, and ISM prints. Expectations or for historically bad prints on the upcoming data releases, however, it will be interesting how markets react considering equities rallied despite a historically bad jobless claims number this week. Ryan Nauman's Weekly Recap: COVID-19 Market Edition and subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox each week!
Topic Industry News
IGM Credit, IGM FX and Rates
Read more from The Context and subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox each week!
Topic Industry News
EPFR Fund Flows
EPFR-tracked US Money Market Funds absorbed a record-setting $254 billion during the week ending March 25 as panicked investors liquidated their holdings in both Equity and Bond Funds and moved as near to cash as they could reasonably get. With the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 exceeding 500,000 globally, redemptions from all Equity Funds hit a 68-week high while Bond Funds followed up last week’s record outflow by posting an even bigger number.
Topic Industry News
EPFR Fund Flows
With the impact of the COVID-19 virus on day-to-day life and the global economy growing by leaps and bounds, fund flows are reflecting the biggest flight to safety by investors since the financial crisis in 2007-08.
Topic Industry News
IGM Credit, IGM FX and Rates
China's activity growth data for February were much weaker than expected, suggesting there is a very good chance the Q1 GDP y/y will fall into negative territory. Among forecasts from major investment banks, the most pessimistic ones for China's Q1 growth y/y are now in the -7/-9% range instead of +2/+3% territory seen a month ago, while that for the 2020 full-year growth are in the +1/+3% area rather than +4/+5%. To avoid the economy worsening further in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, Beijing inevitably has to ramp up fiscal spending substantially over the rest of the year. Given the postponement of the National People’s Congress (NPC) meeting which was initially scheduled for early March, we so far have no official data on how much the government will spend in 2020. However, with the onshore CNY IRS curve steepening sharply recently (chart 1), we doubt the potential increase in government expenditure will be small. Meanwhile, we reckon most (if not all) of the extra spending will be financed by the issuance of special bonds, in particular, the long-term ones. As per chart 2, special bond issuance increased substantially in Jan and Feb, which may be setting a trend for most of the year.
Topic Industry News
PSN Enterprise - Separate Account Analytics Software, Zephyr...
With expectations for a U.S. recession in 2020 running high, one has to believe that bad economic data is priced into markets. We will continue to get more and more economic data releases that miss big on the downside. However, these misses will not come as a surprise, as most market participants are expecting the worst. Investors will continue to focus more on monetary and fiscal policy when determining their investment strategies rather then economic data that is expected to be very soft. Read more from Ryan Nauman's Weekly Recap and subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox each week!
Topic Industry News
IGM Credit, IGM FX and Rates
Read more from The Context and subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox each week!
Topic Industry News
EPFR Fund Flows
What had been a relatively measured response to the coronavirus outbreak that started in China around the New Year became an increasingly disorderly stampede for the exits in late February. As COVID-19 spread across the globe, US stock market took a series of hits culminating in a 7% drop on March 6 that triggered the so-called “circuit breaker” – suspension of trading – for only the third time since its adoption.
Topic Industry News
LendersBenchmark™ - Financial Lending Analytics
Rutger Responds: Importance of Actionable Insights in Uncertain Times The COVID-19 virus is spreading and everyone is looking to understand how this will impact their business and their customer’s lives. As things change in a rapid pace, and will continue to change over the foreseeable future, having access to market insights will help your financial institution to make crucial decisions.
Topic Industry News
IGM Credit, IGM FX and Rates
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held a State Council meeting on 11 March. Two key signals were released there: Speed up credit supply to industries and enterprises. Implement targeted cuts in reserve requirement ratios (RRRs) The signals are very clear, so we will see further liquidity loosening in mainland China in the near term. We expect a targeted RRR cut will be announced very soon. Needless to say, further reduction of loan prime rates (LPRs) will also happen at the regular fixing on 20 March. In regard to the China government bond (CGB) trading strategy under the prevailing environment, we here reiterate our bullish view.
Topic Industry News
IGM Credit, IGM FX and Rates
Read more from The Context and subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox each week!
Topic Industry News
EPFR Fund Flows
The dominant theme for the week ending March 11 – flight to safety – was writ large in the fund flow data as the COVID-19 virus continued to spread and oil producers found themselves in a price war. EPFR-tracked Money Market Funds posted a new inflow record, flows into US and Japan Equity Funds hit five and eight-week highs respectively and commitments to Gold Funds hit their highest level since late 3Q19. Meanwhile Europe, Emerging Markets and Total Return Bond Funds experienced record-setting redemptions, as did all Bond Funds, while outflows from High Yield Bond Funds were the biggest since mid-3Q14 and second largest on record. Fear, however, was not the only theme influencing flows. Yield hunger drove fresh money into Dividend Equity Funds, Brazil’s reform story pulled another $530 million into Brazil Equity Funds and funds with socially responsible (SRI) or environmental, social and governance (ESG) mandates comfortably extended an inflow streak stretching back to late 4Q18. “Investors are also gravitating towards markets with reputations for social cohesion and the capacity for decisive action,” observed EPFR Research Director Cameron Brandt. “This week we saw positive flows for Norway, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, France, UK, Japan, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Russia and Taiwan Equity Funds.” Overall, the second week of March saw $25.8 billion flow out of all Bond Funds, $6.3 billion from Balanced Funds, $4.7 billion from Equity Funds and $1.3 billion from Alternative Funds while Money Market Funds took in over $135 billion.
Topic Industry News
PSN Enterprise - Separate Account Analytics Software, Zephyr...
Economic data takes center stage with the Q4 earnings season coming to a close and with most eyes on the warnings for forward earnings, or the lack thereof, in the wake of the uncertain coronavirus. The inflation prints will be widely watched as supply shocks tend to be inflationary, however, expectations are for inflation to remain muted. Additionally, the consumer sentiment readings will be more telling as the data will correspond more closely to the coronavirus outbreak. Finally, don’t be surprised if we see some data misses as we move forward with economic data that captures the same period as the outbreak. Read more from Ryan Nauman's Weekly Recap and subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox each week!
Topic Industry News
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