Reinsurance renewals news

Kingstone Companies, Inc., a multi-line property and casualty insurance company focused on New York and surrounding northeast areas of the US, has added back a quota share reinsurance arrangement to cover its personal lines business for 2022.

The January 2022 reinsurance renewals have seen some of the best market conditions in years, with broad firming of rates across property catastrophe lines and retrocession that promise to enable underwriters and ILS fund managers to deliver improved returns, on an average calendar year loss basis.

Property insurance prices in peak catastrophe zones continued to soar in the fourth-quarter of 2021, as owners of homes and businesses in those regions of the United States were paying rate increases as high as 40 percent, according to MarketScout.

The National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) traditional reinsurance tower has been renewed by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at $1.064 billion in size for 2022, a slight downsizing on the prior year.

Australian primary insurance group IAG has completed a 2022 renewal of its main catastrophe reinsurance tower, keeping the amount of coverage it has flat at $10 billion, while the cost of the reinsurance program increased by mid-single digits.

Deployable capital in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market declined at the end of 2021 as the January 2022 reinsurance renewals approached, which resulted in some ILS investment managers making use of financing arrangements, we’re told.

Some European property catastrophe reinsurance programs saw significant rate increases at the January 2022 renewals, as negotiations reverted back to the more traditional subjects of price and risk appetite, according to Gallagher Re.

According to international broking group Howden, non-marine catastrophe retrocession rates-on-line for excess-of-loss coverage rose by an average of 15% at the key January 1st 2022 renewal season, outpacing property catastrophe treaty reinsurance rates-on-line by around 6%.

At the January 2022 reinsurance renewals, some buyers of protection were left surprised after insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund capacity proved to be even less abundant than previously assumed, according to James Vickers, Chairman International, Reinsurance at Gallagher Re.

Alternative reinsurance capital levels in the global industry grew 3.7% over the course of 2021, outpacing the 2.7% growth of traditional reinsurance industry capital, according to the latest estimate from broker Guy Carpenter and rating agency AM Best.