Reinsurance News

Munich Re reported a quarterly profit of €1.1 billion for the start of 2025 despite suffering the same amount in losses from the California wildfires. But the company also cited “market challenges” and growing pressure at the April renewals and while still expanding in premium terms, did reduce in certain areas like property XL.

At the Insurance & Reinsurance Legacy Association (IRLA) annual Congress event held in Brighton today, speakers highlighted the opportunity to innovate alongside the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market and sources of alternative capital, to provide solutions to aid in exit liquidity and support casualty ILS transactions.

The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has released new figures on the two major severe weather catastrophes that have affected Australia so far in 2025, putting the combined claims burden for the insurance and reinsurance industry so far at AU $1.5 billion, which remains low compared to some industry loss estimates.

AXA Group reported that gross written premiums grew by 12% for its AXA XL Reinsurance division during the first-quarter of the year, but the firm’s CFO Alban de Mailly Nesle explained that the majority of that was ceded to insurance-linked securities (ILS) strategies.

Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc., the nationally expansive, Florida headquartered property and casualty insurer, has finalised its reinsurance renewal by securing almost $2.5 billion of limit, up 13% on the $2.194 billion renewed a year ago, while paying just $8 million more for that.

European headquartered re/insurer Zurich took advantage of market conditions to buy a global aggregate reinsurance cover at the April 1st renewal, which the firm’s CFO called “innovative” and said it included alternative capacity from collateralized markets.

Palomar Insurance Holdings is on track to achieve, and possibly exceed, its previously guided reinsurance pricing improvement of flat to down 5% for its 2025 renewal, thanks to favourable pricing on its latest catastrophe bond and a newly structured Hawaii excess-of-loss treaty, CEO Mac Armstrong told analysts during the company’s Q1 2025 earnings call.

Analysts at J.P. Morgan believe that reinsurance pricing has reverted back to 2023 levels, which was the beginning of recent market hardening. Data suggests the catastrophe bond market has softened a little more, or ahead of the traditional market’s pace, being closer to 2022 levels at this time.

Everest Group reported a 95% jump in ceded property catastrophe written premiums to cells of its Mt. Logan Re Ltd. third-party capitalised sidecar-like structure in the first-quarter of 2025, as more excess-of-loss business was shared with the investors backing the Mt. Logan Capital Management strategies.

White Mountains reported that in the first-quarter of 2025 its investment into the Outrigger Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar, that supports its property and casualty insurance and reinsurance subsidiary Ark, was impacted by the California wildfires which contributed to a loss for the sidecar and an elevated 166% combined ratio for the period.