Reinsurance News

American International Group (AIG) has reduced its aggregate reinsurance tower’s limit to $2.05 billion for 2021, down from $2.5 billion in 2020.

The ongoing renegotiation and fine tuning of terms and conditions related to insurance-linked securities (ILS) capital deployment continued at the key January reinsurance renewals, with ILS fund managers gaining some more ground.

The Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation, which administers Australia’s terrorism insurance scheme, has renewed its retrocessional reinsurance program with $3.475 billion of coverage, with limit secured slightly up on the prior year as it reduced its retention by $25 million.

Catastrophe risk modelling specialist Karen Clark & Company has updated its estimate for insurance and reinsurance market losses from the ongoing winter storm event in the United States, which has been named winter storm Uri, to $18 billion, reflecting the widespread and severe impacts felt.

The insurance and reinsurance industry is likely to experience a “transition year” in 2021, as its recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continues, alongside reducing exposure to it from property and casualty (P&C) contracts, analysts at RBC have explained.

Counterparty risks are back on the agenda in the insurance and reinsurance market, as part of carriers and regulators heightened concerns over credit risks and creditworthiness, which could serve to make fully-collateralized reinsurance through insurance-linked securities (ILS) even more appealing to ceding companies.

The Philippines will have a new private sector catastrophe insurance risk pooling facility in operation this quarter, with the initial launch of the Philippine Catastrophe Insurance Facility (PCIF) expected in Q1 2021.

The ongoing winter storm event in the United States, named winter storm Uri, is thought likely to become the largest winter storm loss on record for the insurance and reinsurance industry, while the Texas insurance regulator said it could have a bigger impact than hurricane Harvey.

Global reinsurance giant Swiss Re reported its full-year 2020 results this morning, highlighting $3.9 billion of losses from the COVID-19 pandemic and $1.7 billion from what it called a higher frequency of natural catastrophe events.

Universal Insurance Holdings, the Florida headquartered, nationally expansive primary insurance carrier, announced last night that it has taken a nearly $100 million hit from catastrophe losses and loss creep from prior year events during the fourth-quarter of 2020.