Reinsurance renewals news

Italian insurance and financial services group Unipol is aiming to secure a new aggregate reinsurance cover this year, as the company becomes the latest to look to better protect its earnings against smaller, more frequent severe weather and catastrophe events.

Property and natural catastrophe reinsurance are the areas of the market where Swiss Re sees rising competition, but the firm’s CEO Andreas Berger said last week that he still sees them as healthy, with terms, conditions and attachments stable, explaining that he is “a believer in cat.”

Global reinsurance firm Swiss Re has reported a lower than anticipated level of losses from the Los Angeles, California wildfires in the first-quarter of the year, helping its P&C Re divisions combined ratio beat analyst consensus, while the company has also reported continued premium growth at the April renewals.

Having been hit hard by the wildfires in California this year and then explained that it would acquire more retrocession to protect its earnings from volatility due to secondary peril loss impacts, Conduit Re has stayed true to its word, purchasing catastrophe hedging for US and global secondary perils, as well as more aggregate retrocession.

Munich Re still sees reinsurance pricing as attractive and its CFO Christoph Jurecka said today that the company is “absolutely prepared” to keep growing into US property catastrophe risks, as long as the business meets its requirements on terms, conditions and price.

Hannover Re is anticipating a roughly EUR 230 million recovery from its retrocessional reinsurance to support its losses from the Los Angeles wildfires, with the majority of that expected to come from the proportional K-Cessions quota share sidecar, Sven Althoff, Member of the Executive Board for Property & Casualty (P&C) said this morning.

Munich Re reported a quarterly profit of €1.1 billion for the start of 2025 despite suffering the same amount in losses from the California wildfires. But the company also cited “market challenges” and growing pressure at the April renewals and while still expanding in premium terms, did reduce in certain areas like property XL.

Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc., the nationally expansive, Florida headquartered property and casualty insurer, has finalised its reinsurance renewal by securing almost $2.5 billion of limit, up 13% on the $2.194 billion renewed a year ago, while paying just $8 million more for that.

European headquartered re/insurer Zurich took advantage of market conditions to buy a global aggregate reinsurance cover at the April 1st renewal, which the firm’s CFO called “innovative” and said it included alternative capacity from collateralized markets.

Palomar Insurance Holdings is on track to achieve, and possibly exceed, its previously guided reinsurance pricing improvement of flat to down 5% for its 2025 renewal, thanks to favourable pricing on its latest catastrophe bond and a newly structured Hawaii excess-of-loss treaty, CEO Mac Armstrong told analysts during the company’s Q1 2025 earnings call.