Reinsurance News

Specialty insurance and reinsurance underwriter the Canopius Group has hired well-known insurance-linked securities (ILS) focused executive Brent Slade in Bermuda, who will become the firm’s new Head of ILS and have a remit to expand ILS activities for the Group, Artemis has learned.

According to global reinsurance giant Swiss Re’s sigma research team, insured losses from severe thunderstorms reached a record high of US $60 billion in 2023, while overall natural catastrophe insured losses are estimated to have surpassed $100 billion again in 2023.

Despite the rate increases that have already been achieved across catastrophe exposed property insurance and property catastrophe reinsurance, it is the view of most reinsurers that property cat pricing is still insufficient, according to Amwins.

Reinsurance Group of America (RGA) has announced the launch of a new Missouri-domiciled third-party life reinsurance sidecar company named Ruby Reinsurance Company (Ruby Re), which has been backed by a number of investors including insurance-linked securities (ILS) specialist Hudson Structured Capital Management.

Insurtech Floodbase, which acts as a data provider and reporting agent for parametric risk transfer arrangements, has partnered with commercial insurance and reinsurance broking group Oneglobal to develop parametric flood insurance solutions for the Asian region.

A new reinsurance fund has been launched to support delivery of innovative insurance products to protect smallholder farmers in Africa, with One Acre Fund Re expected to become a source of capacity to back what will likely be largely parametric risk transfer instruments.

New technologies can serve as a bridge between the re/insurance industry and the world’s most vulnerable, and alongside the use of insurance-linked securities (ILS) and innovative solutions such as parametrics, can help to close the global protection gap, according to the Insurance Development Forum (IDF).

AXA Climate, the specialist weather, climate and parametric risk transfer unit of the AXA Group, and broker Howden are working together to implement a parametric flood insurance arrangement in Togo, which is expected to cover three cities and over 700,000 inhabitants of them.

The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) is expected to buy more reinsurance and risk transfer in 2024 as its exposure grows and it has been advised to get into the catastrophe bond market sooner than later to renew a maturing issuance, while also starting its reinsurance renewal planning as soon as possible.

Florida’s property insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, could increase its purchase of reinsurance and catastrophe bond backed risk transfer in 2024, with its new layer structure following the merging of its accounts suggesting as much as $5.5 billion could be purchased next year.