Reinsurance News

The New Zealand Earthquake Commission (EQC), the state-owned residential property disaster insurance entity, has had its cap limit on residential building cover increased by 50% to $150,000, which will see it take on more risk and so perhaps need to buy more reinsurance.

Insurance-linked securities (ILS), reinsurance and transportation investment manager, Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd. has entered into a strategic relationship with reinsurer Everest Re that will see it invest across several Hudson funds as the pair co-operate on a number of fronts.

Consulting and actuarial firm Milliman, Inc. has recognised an opportunity to profit from the expansion of coastal zone insurers in the United States and their need for sophisticated analytics, responding with the launch of a Property & Casualty office in Tampa, Florida.

The world’s largest reinsurance firm Munich Re sees opportunities to scale-up its relationship with ILS and the capital markets as a way to secure efficient retrocession for its own book, to help its clients access investor-backed capacity and to earn fees by providing services to the ILS sector.

Reinsurance brokerage and advisory JLT Re has announced the appointment of a new leader for its treaty reinsurance offering in the Asia region, naming Vinod Krishnan as CEO, Asia Treaty.

Bermudian insurance and reinsurance firm Arch Capital announced an interesting arrangement with the U.S. mortgage insurer Freddie Mac this week, which will position the re/insurer as an intermediary of sorts, channeling mortgage credit and insurance related risks back to a panel of reinsurance capital providers.

The reinsurance company of the future is one which has access to both a traditional balance-sheet as well as alternative capital, and is sophisticated enough to recognise when there are sources of capital with a lower-cost than its own, that can be deployed to the benefit of its clients.

Insurance giant Generali Group said in its annual report that while it has historically preferred protection from traditional reinsurance sources, in some cases it has found that insurance-linked securities (ILS) has offered “more competitive terms,” suggesting the insurer may seek to increase its use of ILS going forwards.

The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) has reached a new milestone in its use of the private risk transfer markets, as its reinsurance program surpassed $8 billion in size for the first time after the January renewals, with further growth to come as the insurer targets $10 billion of protection by 2022.

Reinsurance firm Transatlantic Re, or TransRe for short, said that it was disappointed with the rate rises experienced at the January 2018 renewals, but noted that should rates rise further throughout 2018 it could deploy more third-party capital, alongside its own capacity.