All of our news and analysis on the retrocessional reinsurance marketplace.
Retrocession is effectively reinsurance for reinsurers, so a tertiary layer of risk transfer away from the original risk, if you consider primary, reinsurance and then retrocession.
As reinsurance is insurance for insurers, retrocessional, or retro, protection is reinsurance for reinsurers.
The retrocession reinsurance market has increasingly come to depend on the capital markets and insurance-linked securities (ILS).
As of mid-year 2022, global retrocession capacity has been estimated to be as high as $60bn, around $20bn of which is indemnity based and the rest in other formats.
The alternative capital markets and ILS funds, or investors, play a significant role in global retrocession, as too do instruments such as catastrophe bonds and industry-loss warranties (ILW).
The Covid-19 pandemic is proving to be a catalyst for an expected broad hardening of reinsurance and retrocession markets it seems, with brokers expecting rates to move largely in unison as the financial impact to carriers appears likely to hurt all corners of the market.
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With natural catastrophe reinsurance premiums underwritten having jumped at Swiss Re in the last year, the company has continued to make use of insurance-linked securities (ILS) investor appetite to help it prepare its portfolio for the coming hurricane season.
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Global reinsurance firm Hannover Re continued to expand its activities in the fronting space, with the volume of limit fronted for insurance-linked securities (ILS) investors and funds increasing by 7% during the year.
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The impacts of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic will be felt broadly across the global reinsurance marketplace, but in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market the effects may drive a reduction in available ILS capacity and trapping of collateral, Darren Redhead, CEO of Lancashire Capital Management said today.
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The latest catastrophe bond to be sponsored by reinsurance firm Swiss Re has been successfully upsized 7.5% at pricing, we can reveal, with the Matterhorn Re Ltd. (Series 2020-3) transaction now set to secure the company $215 million of U.S. named storm retrocession.
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The insurance and reinsurance market looks increasingly disciplined and as a result Lancashire Holdings has taken some opportunities to grow in the first-quarter and expects this discipline to persist, driving further improvements in risk pricing, CEO Alex Maloney said today.
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Markel Corporation has put some of its own money behind the running-off of its retrocessional reinsurance investment manager Markel CATCo, investing $90 million in one of the CATCo funds in the first-quarter to boost capital available to fund investor redemptions.
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Cincinnati Financial Corporation’s CEO Steven Johnston said the company’s property catastrophe reinsurance panel will be expected to “follow our fortunes” on any Covid-19 pandemic related losses that fall under that program’s coverage for the re/insurer.
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Markel Corporation reported its first-quarter 2020 results yesterday and in its report the company warned of the potential hit to its insurance-linked securities (ILS) operations from the Covid-19 pandemic, which is perhaps partly evidenced in a -4% decline in assets under management at Markel’s flagship ILS fund manager Nephila Capital.
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Head of PCS, Tom Johansmeyer, tells Artemis that there’s a real sense across the marketplace that certain large, complex insurance towers are going to be affected by silent pandemic risk.
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