Reinsurance News

The latest bout of severe and convective weather that affected the Victoria region of Australia back on Valentine’s Day in February, is now estimated to have cost the insurance sector around $104 million, so far.

Broking group Lockton anticipates that primary property insurance prices in the United States will continue to rise, even as the reinsurance market levels out after an influx of capital and recovering appetites from reinsurers.

Allstate reported a massive toll from severe weather related wind and hail events in 2023 and has booked a $36 million catastrophe reinsurance recoverable against one of its exposed Sanders Re II catastrophe bonds for the year.

The “step change” in property catastrophe reinsurance pricing, attachments and terms seen in 2023 has “broadly held” at the renewals so far in 2024 and analysts at KBW said that, in the industry, almost no-one expects these changes to reverse anytime soon.

Mt. Logan Re Ltd., the Everest Group owned and operated third-party investor capitalised reinsurance sidecar-like investment structure, has strengthened its investor relations team with the addition of two key hires.

SCOR has reported a significant -7.2 point benefit to its combined ratio due to positive development of prior year catastrophe reserves, with hurricane Ian seen as the main contributor, helping the company report an 85% combined ratio for the full year 2023.

Fitch Ratings believes that the trend of net outflows that has been seen across insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds and structures that allocated capital directly to private reinsurance and retrocession arrangements is now over, with assets now deemed more stable, suggesting a chance of more consistent growth is ahead.

Aki Hussain, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of insurer Hiscox, expects continued outflows from the firm’s insurance-linked securities (ILS) business in 2024, but with new money starting to come in and with Hiscox set to supplement the business with its own capital, the expectation is for net portfolio growth this year.

According to a report from analysts at BMO Capital Markets, a prominent reinsurance broking executive from Howden Tiger said that property catastrophe pricing power is likely to fall by up to 10% at the upcoming mid-year reinsurance renewal season.

Hiscox Group had a particularly busy end to the year in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space, with a new collateralised reinsurance sidecar and its first catastrophe bond fund launched, while its Hiscox ILS fund management unit also raised an additional $140 million of new capital for the January renewals and doubled its fee income.