Municipal Bond Insurers and the Puerto Rico Default

 

A recent article by Reuters opines that municipal bond insurance companies will survive the Puerto Rico debt crisis.  Bond insurers insure about $13 billion of Puerto Rico’s 72 billion in debt.  Substantially greater than the amount of Detroit debt that was insured.

One June 30, 2015, North by Northwest announced that it had lowered its estimation of Assured Guaranty’s claims pay ability based on the high level of exposure to debt issue by Puerto Rico.  Standard & Poor’s is quoted in the Reuters article and states that it is monitoring the situation.

Reuters article