Reinsurance renewals news

French headquartered global reinsurance firm SCOR shrank its property and casualty reinsurance book at the key January 2020 renewals, citing the lack of price movement in the market in response to clearly increasing loss trends.

Hannover Re, the German headquartered global reinsurance company, grew its premiums by 14% at the key January renewals, adding a significant 20% to its North American book, but still feels catastrophe reinsurance rates have further to move.

Bermuda-headquartered global reinsurance firm and third-party capital manager RenaissanceRe has revealed that it raised an impressive more than $925 million for its insurance-linked securities (ILS) and joint-venture vehicles Upsilon, Medici and Vermeer in recent months.

Reinsurance pricing could rise by as much as 20% at the Florida renewals in June 2020, with the continued pressure from loss creep on both insurers and reinsurers the main driver, according to A.M. Best.

Constrained levels of insurance-linked securities (ILS) capital remains a feature of the market as it moves into 2020, in some cases affecting the ability of cedents to secure the coverage they needed at the recent renewals.

The California Earthquake Authority’s (CEA) reinsurance program reached a new record size of almost $8.6 billion at the January 2020 renewals, with catastrophe bond and ILS sources still playing a key role.

Australian primary insurance giant Suncorp has referred to an “unprecedented” start to the season for catastrophe losses this morning, saying that it now expects to make recoveries across its reinsurance program, including its main program, drop-downs and aggregate reinsurance including perhaps its stop-loss.

Australian primary insurance giant IAG is set to make a claim under its calendar year 2020 main catastrophe reinsurance program that provides it with per-occurrence protection for the recent hailstorm events, signalling that the gross loss impact to this one insurer will surpass A$250 million.

Given the way reinsurance rates moved at the recent January renewals, particularly in property catastrophe lines, the market should expect further “broad-based price increase” at the next sets of renewals in April and at the mid-year, Moody’s believes.

The amount of insurance-linked securities (ILS) capital and collateral that is still trapped after recent catastrophe loss years has fallen only slightly, as some cat bond collateral in particular was released but fresh collateralised reinsurance and retro collateral was trapped by 2019 loss events.