Reinsurance News

JA Kyosai, the Japanese National Mutual Insurance Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives often better known as Zenkyoren, has established a reinsurance company in Guernsey with a strategic goal to underwrite international risks to diversify its exposure, with investments into catastrophe bonds also in scope for the structure.

Montauk Point Ltd., a Bermuda-based firm that provides independent advisory and strategic advice to third-party risk capital providers, has appointed 35-year insurance and reinsurance veteran Dr. Gero Michel to lead its risk and analytics platform.

Property catastrophe reinsurance rates-on-line continued to fall at the April 1st renewals and for the United States, broker Guy Carpenter’s index now shows that 2026 is experiencing the sharpest fall in US property cat pricing since 2014.

Alternative reinsurance capital is reinforcing current reinsurance market trends as total non-life insurance-linked securities (ILS) assets reached $135 billion at year-end 2025, a 19% increase year-on-year.

The outstanding market for collateralized reinsurance sidecar structures grew by more than $5 billion in capacity terms over the course of full-year 2025, with casualty and non-catastrophe vehicles a key driver of sidecar market expansion, Aon Securities has said.

Global demand for reinsurance increased by approximately 10% at the April 1st reinsurance renewals, as buyers capitalised on favourable market conditions to secure more comprehensive protection, with some expected to return to the market post-renewal to explore additional purchases, according to broker Aon’s April renewal report.

Alternative or third-party reinsurance capital, so that deployed through insurance-linked securities and related collateralized structures, grew by 18% over the course of 2025 and 10% just in the fourth-quarter to reach a record $136 billion at the end of the year, according to the latest estimate from broker Aon.

Reinsurance broker Gallagher Re has reported that Japanese property catastrophe programmes ran loss free, leading to risk-adjusted rate decreases of between -15% and -17.5% at the April 1st, 2026, reinsurance renewals, while property catastrophe in other regions saw risk-adjusted rate decreases of between -7.5% and -25%.

CatIQ, Canada’s insured loss and exposure index provider, has issued its fifth and final industry loss estimate from the ice storm that struck Ontario and Quebec in late March 2025, putting the insured market loss at CAD $466 million, a 5% decrease from its fourth loss estimate of CAD $490 million that was issued in September.

The April 1st reinsurance renewals saw a continuation of the softening trend, with risk-adjusted property catastrophe rates-on-line returning to levels last seen in the early 2020’s, according to broker Howden Re.