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This book examines the impact of rating changes and rating watches on CDS written on insurance companies. We address the question of whether insurers´ rating announcements issued by A.M. Best, Fitch, Moody´s and Standard& Poors provide CDS market participants with new and valuable information and, more broadly, whether rating agencies perform a monitoring role that is beneficial to stakeholders of insurance companies. Findings are of interest to supervisors, regulators, insurance clients and insurance brokers that look upon ratings as measures of insurers´ capacity to honour their financial obligations and to insurers´ management who see that investors value information contained in additions to the negative watchlist.

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Lazzarin, Gianluca
Gianluca Lazzarin is a junior portfolio manager at EFG Asset Management Switzerland. He earned a MA in Banking and Finance at St. Gallen University and a MSc in International Management at Bocconi University.

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