Reinsurance News

Australian primary insurance giant Suncorp Group has renewed its main reinsurance program arrangements for its fiscal year 2025, adding $350 million to the top of its catastrophe reinsurance tower, taking it to $6.75 billion.

The CCRIF SPC (formerly known as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) has seen its members renew their parametric insurance policies for the 2024/2025 policy year, with 10% more in parametric coverage purchased, while also making its first payout of 2024, $6.4 million for Guatemala after heavy rainfall.

Sources tell us that the parametric tropical cyclone insurance coverage provided to some of the islands of Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines by the CCRIF SPC (formerly known as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) is likely to be triggered and payout within the usual two week period.

With numerous forecasters warning of a very active Atlantic hurricane season this year, some insurance-linked securities (ILS) markets eased off somewhat at the June 1st and July 1st, 2024, reinsurance renewals, which led to a little bit of a squeeze in places like Florida, according to James Vickers, Chairman, Gallagher Re International.

With major hurricane Beryl churning across the Caribbean towards Jamaica, the country’s Minister of Finance Dr. Nigel Clarke has highlighted the importance of robust disaster risk financing and responsive parametric risk transfer arrangements that are in-place, including its World Bank catastrophe bond.

There was increased demand for retrocessional protection around the mid-year reinsurance renewals, as existing buyers sought to purchase more retro and some historical buyers returned to the market, according to Guy Carpenter.

The CRESTA organisation, which tracks catastrophe events outside the US that have generated insurance industry losses of over USD 1 billion, has revealed that aggregate losses in H1 of 2024 are expected to be around the long-term average of US $8.5 billion.

There is “considerable” room for growth in the cyber catastrophe bond market, as cyber insurers and reinsurers get increasingly comfortable with event-based excess-of-loss coverage options and use of quota shares in the cyber reinsurance space reduces, broking group Howden has said.

The reinsurance sidecar market has continued to expand through the second-quarter of 2024 and broker Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions team estimates that over $1 billion of capital has entered this proportional collateralized reinsurance market in the last year.

Reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter has said that the fact expected mid-year insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund raises were “somewhat lower than expected” had a bearing on the just completed renewals.