catastrophe reinsurance

Speaking at a recent analyst conference, Swiss Re’s Group Chief Underwriting Officer Thierry Léger explained that pricing is now hard in the natural catastrophe reinsurance space, but that further rate hardening is also expected.

Neil Eckert, Chairman of Conduit Re, a reinsurance company that started-up just over a year ago, believes that there could be some shortages in catastrophe capacity as 2022 progresses, which may provide attractive opportunities.

In spite of a challenging few years for both managers and investors from across the insurance-linked securities (ILS) space, the Co-Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Markel Corporation, Richie Whitt, remains optimistic on the future of the market.

Placing ILS fund manager Nephila Capital as the single point of entry to the property catastrophe reinsurance market for Markel Corporation is seen as a “cleaner option” for the company and also a way of generating operational efficiencies, Markel senior executives said yesterday.

Nephila Capital is set to become the single point of entry for Markel to access property catastrophe reinsurance, as the company shutters its Markel Global Reinsurance property CAT unit and creates a centre of excellence for catastrophe risk under the ILS fund manager.

A number of syndicates operating at Lloyd’s have stepped up at the renewals of Florida catastrophe reinsurance to increase their share of program layers and ramp up line sizes, all at a time when the Corporation itself is maintaining a focus on minimising or moderating cat exposure across its marketplace members.

Property casualty insurance holding company United Insurance Holdings Corp. (also known as UPC Insurance) has swapped its per-occurrence catastrophe reinsurance program for a new one-year new aggregate excess of loss reinsurance program, at the January renewals.

Greenlight Re, the Cayman Islands domiciled, hedge fund strategy reinsurance firm backed by David Einhorn and his Greenlight Capital, Inc. hedge fund, has slashed its premiums written again in the last quarter as it declined to renew business deemed unprofitable.

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but some reinsurance companies aren’t pulling back on underwriting U.S. catastrophe reinsurance business, as the margins available continue to be attractive to firms for which the hurdle rate is sufficient to meet cost-of-capital.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Amer Ahmed the CEO of Allianz Re said that some reinsurance rates are reaching unsustainable levels which, if prices continue to decline, may cause his firm to buy more reinsurance and sell less.