capital markets

Managers of third-party reinsurance capital and insurance-linked securities (ILS) should anticipate a more challenging fundraising environment through 2022, as investor scepticism is currently high after recent years of catastrophe losses, according to RenaissanceRe CEO Kevin O’Donnell.

International law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP has announced the hiring of David Luce, a senior lawyer with significant insurance-linked securities (ILS) experience, as well as experience of a range of alternative risk transfer and financing structures.

Roosevelt Road Re, an expansive Bermuda based reinsurance company launched with a partnership with US MGA Tradesman, has announced the hiring of Darren Bailey, an executive with ILS and capital markets experience.

With capital still abundant, the reinsurance hardening seen at recent renewals is assumed to be driven by risk aversion this time around, but the very factors driving risk and pricing higher are also seen as tailwinds for the re/insurance sector longer-term, by investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.

At a time when London’s market share in reinsurance has stagnated, the insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector in the United Kingdom and its failure to gain traction so far is an example of regulation failing to support the market’s ambitions, representatives of the House of Lords heard in a hearing yesterday.

Speaking to insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds and investors in 2022, the London insurance and reinsurance market is seen as a venue where deploying capital to access differentiated insurance or reinsurance-linked returns is increasingly attractive, but still ease of access is cited as a problem.

The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) is now set to finally appoint insurance and reinsurance broker Aon to provide catastrophe risk modeling services, after the company was recommended by its Actuarial & Underwriting Committee after a second round of RFP’s.

Reinsurance as a sector and the major global reinsurers have suffered due to elevated catastrophe losses in recent years, but analysts at investment bank Berenberg believe that Hannover Re’s comprehensive retrocession program is giving investors confidence and helped to buoy its share price in 2021.

Global reinsurance firm Swiss Re developed its 1863 insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund platform to be “investor friendly” and has attempted to address some of the “structural inefficiencies” often seen in ILS products, according to Martin Bisping, CEO of the reinsurers’ Swiss Re Insurance-Linked Investment Management Ltd (SRILIM) unit.

A UK parliamentary group, the House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee, has launched an inquiry into commercial insurance and reinsurance regulation, to assess its effects on the competitiveness of the London market.