Reinsurance renewals news

RenaissanceRe, the Bermuda headquartered global reinsurance company, has lifted its third-party capital assets under management to a new high of $6.4 billion as of January 1st 2021.

Global reinsurer SCOR said today that it grew its January reinsurance renewal portfolio by almost 16%, in terms of premiums, while prices were up by 7.8% across its renewed business, at 1/1 2021.

Palomar Insurance Holdings, the speciality California-based insurer that provides largely catastrophe exposed property products, has expanded its aggregate reinsurance protection with a new purchase, but also revealed some recoveries under other reinsurance contracts from the end of last year.

While reinsurance capacity is abundant and available, enough to dampen rate increases slightly at the January renewals, the continuing existence of uncertainty in the market means that for reinsurance, “Despite plenty of available capital, it is of course not available at any price,” according to Lockton Re’s Ross Howard.

German reinsurance firm Hannover Re has downsized its capital markets backed K-Cessions quota share retro reinsurance sidecar facility to $610 million for 2021, a roughly 10% decrease from the prior year.

Hannover Re gave its report on the January 2021 reinsurance renewals today, citing around 10% price improvement across U.S. natural catastrophe reinsurance business, while across its book renewed business was subject to price increases of 5.5% and premium volumes rose by 8.5%.

The outcome of the January 2021 reinsurance renewals and expectations for the rest of this year suggest “a real repricing of risk” is underway, which may now continue into 2022, according to analysts at RBC Capital Markets.

A number of insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds have continued to report small increases in losses and reserves set related to business interruption claims from the Covid-19 pandemic, we understand, which continued to weigh on results over the last two months.

The January reinsurance renewals fell well short of hard market price increases, with part of the reason being new capacity from both incumbents and new entrants, according to AXIS Capital CEO Albert Benchimol.

The recent ruling from the UK Supreme Court, that found largely in favour of insurance policyholders in the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA)’s business interruption insurance test case appeals, is not expected to drive significant additional losses through to reinsurance, Fitch Ratings has said.