Reinsurance News

Validus Holdings’ efficient and comprehensive retrocession reinsurance program benefited the firm during the second-quarter of 2016, helping it recover $81 million of losses from the Canadian wildfires and the Jubilee oil field loss event.

Alternative capital is clearly a permanent feature of the global reinsurance market and will continue to increase its share of the global property catastrophe limit, but its growth in the space should no longer be termed as exponential, says JLT Re.

Customised or tailored reinsurance arrangements, alternative risk transfer (ART) solutions and insurance-linked securities (ILS), alongside insurance technology developments (insurtech) are all seen as key to help mutual insurance firms grow their businesses and compete.

Strong risk management and a diverse portfolio of property catastrophe risks helped New York exchange listed fully-collateralized reinsurance firm Blue Capital Reinsurance Holdings Ltd., a subsidiary of Endurance, to a profit in Q2 2016 despite the impact of global catastrophe loss activity.

Watford Re, the investment-oriented, total return reinsurance joint venture run by Bermudian re/insurance group Arch Capital alongside asset manager Highbridge Principal Strategies, has extended its reach with the addition of a 50 state admitted U.S. insurance carrier.

The Lloyd’s of London insurance and reinsurance market has put its plans to launch an index for diversified insurance risks, featuring loss ratios and data on the insurance market’s performance, on hold as understanding the impact of Brexit takes priority.

XL Group, the recently re-domiciled to Bermuda insurance and reinsurance group, believes firmly that size matters as a provider of reinsurance capacity, but also that when selecting how to manage risks choosing the right capital source is key.

Global Parametrics, the recently launched start-up that aims to sell parametric and index-based risk transfer to organisations which are largely unprotected today, has hired Hector Ibarra, previously of the World Bank, as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

The problem with the global reinsurance market today is not the abundance of capital from both traditional and alternative sources, but a lack of sufficient demand for reinsurance protection across the globe, according to Des Potter, Head of GC Securities, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

A period of severe summer storms in the Netherlands in June, which brought high winds, torrential rain and large hail to the region, is expected to result in more than EUR500m of insurance industry losses, with reinsurance capital expected to take a share.