Reinsurance News

European windstorm Ciarán is estimated to have caused an insurance industry loss of between €800 million and €1.3 billion, according to Verisk’s extreme event solutions, with the majority of the losses expected in France.

Conduit Re, the Bermuda headquartered global reinsurance company that launched for the 2021 underwriting year, said today there are signals that further risk-adjusted rate improvements could be ahead, at the upcoming January renewals.

Munich Re has delivered another very strong quarter of results, helped by major losses and natural catastrophe costs coming in below expectation, which has enabled the reinsurance giant to lift its profit guidance for the full-year.

According to Hiscox Group’s interim statement this morning, the firm’s insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund management unit, Hiscox ILS, has delivered record fund performance so far in 2023, while maintaining stable assets under management (AUM) in the third-quarter.

Global insurance and reinsurance market losses from natural catastrophe events have already surpassed $100 billion in 2023, making this the sixth year since 2017 that this level of nat cat insured losses has been reached, according to Gallagher Re’s Chief Science Officer Steve Bowen.

Rating agency AM Best is not anticipating any significant inflow of new capital or startup companies into the global reinsurance sector, at least not enough to derail the current hard market conditions, Greg Carter, Managing Director, Analytics – EMEA & Asia Pacific said today.

Nephila Capital, the insurance-linked securities (ILS) asset manager owned by Markel, has effectively cleaned up its legacy reserves and eliminated trapped capital for its investors, through an arrangement entered into with the help of an adverse development cover (ADC) from its parent.

Reinsurance sidecar vehicles are in favour right now, with investors liking the certainty they provide in terms of duration and seeing them as an attractive way to capitalise on a hard reinsurance market that is of unknown duration, while the returns are clearly much-improved as the majority are pitching 20% plus returns.

While Beazley’s CEO said earlier this year that underwriting property risks is a “moving feast” because of climate change, the re/insurance company has not shied away, writing 63% more in property premiums so far this year in what it calls “exceptional” market conditions.

There is evidence from the third-quarter 2023 results of White Mountains that its re/insurer subsidiary Ark is starting to see increasingly significant benefits delivered by the $250 million Outrigger Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar that it launched at the end of 2022.