Archive for January, 2022

Neil Eckert, Chairman of Conduit Re, a reinsurance company that started-up just over a year ago, believes that there could be some shortages in catastrophe capacity as 2022 progresses, which may provide attractive opportunities.

Insurance-linked securities (ILS) portfolios with predominantly catastrophe bond holdings have on average outperformed many mid- and higher-risk ILS fund strategies that contain private ILS transactions over recent years, according to analysis from Frontier Advisors.

The value-proposition of risk transfer through reinsurance remains strong, according to broking giant Aon, who said recently that while reinsurance capital levels remain adequate across most of the market, there are some opportunities for new capital to enter and existing players to expand.

Reinsurance market pricing is expected to keep rising through 2022 at the renewals, but the rate of increase is expected to slow somewhat, by Fitch Ratings.

Conduit Re, a Class of 2021 reinsurance start-up that raised close to $1.1 billion of capital for its launch in an IPO, said this morning that it has secured its own outwards reinsurance (retrocession) at the January renewals, noting that it expects to make more retro purchases as the year progresses.

Record catastrophe bond and related insurance-linked securities (ILS) market issuance in 2021 has helped the Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX) to increase the value its listings of cat bond and ILS notes by 26% during the year.

Acrisure Re, the reinsurance broking unit of the Acrisure group, has hired well-respected catastrophe modeling specialist and industry leader Dr. Ming Li as its new Global Head of Catastrophe Modeling.

Reinsurance as a sector and the major global reinsurers have suffered due to elevated catastrophe losses in recent years, but analysts at investment bank Berenberg believe that Hannover Re’s comprehensive retrocession program is giving investors confidence and helped to buoy its share price in 2021.

Tenax Capital, the London based hedge fund manager that was founded by CEO Massimo Figna and now counts FOSUN as its major shareholder, believes that catastrophe bond pricing and terms & conditions will remain attractive through 2022, while more inflows from generalist fixed income investors are possible.

Global reinsurance firm Swiss Re developed its 1863 insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund platform to be “investor friendly” and has attempted to address some of the “structural inefficiencies” often seen in ILS products, according to Martin Bisping, CEO of the reinsurers’ Swiss Re Insurance-Linked Investment Management Ltd (SRILIM) unit.