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).
Reinsurance sidecar vehicles are in favour right now, with investors liking the certainty they provide in terms of duration and seeing them as an attractive way to capitalise on a hard reinsurance market that is of unknown duration, while the returns are clearly much-improved as the majority are pitching 20% plus returns.
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K2 Advisors, the hedge fund focused investment management unit of Franklin Templeton, has raised its conviction on investing into insurance-linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance investments to “strongly overweight” saying it anticipates firm pricing conditions and despite some spread tightening in catastrophe bonds the yields remain attractive.
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There is evidence from the third-quarter 2023 results of White Mountains that its re/insurer subsidiary Ark is starting to see increasingly significant benefits delivered by the $250 million Outrigger Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar that it launched at the end of 2022.
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Private ILS funds that allocate to collateralised reinsurance instruments other than catastrophe bonds, are now accelerating their 2023 returns over the group of pure cat bond funds in the Eurekahedge ILS Advisers Index after September’s results.
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Allied World Assurance Company (AWAC), the global insurance and reinsurance company that is part of the Fairfax Financial group, has returned to the catastrophe bond market looking to renew its maturing deal, seeking a larger $250 million of protection with this 2001 CAT Re Ltd. (Series 2023-1) transaction.
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It’s become apparent that PGGM, the Dutch pension fund investment manager that allocates the largest amount to the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market on behalf of end-client the Dutch pension PFZW, added a new ILS manager to its allocation list in 2022, with an investment into a fund managed by Integral ILS.
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Signal Iduna Reinsurance Ltd. (SI Re), the Swiss based reinsurer located in the city of Zug, has announced the promotion of current head of ILS Markets & Retrocession Dr Robert Salzmann to become the firm’s Head of Underwriting as well as his current responsibilities.
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Concerns are being voiced over the way reinsurance capital has moved further away from secondary perils, as well as the reduction in available aggregate coverage, which perhaps led Aon to state in a recent report that this is a critical area where innovative efforts may be able to fill some of the reinsurance protection gaps […]
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Analysts at investment bank Goldman Sachs say that, while the supply of capital to the global reinsurance market is generally healing, this process has likely been slowed somewhat by the recent further increase to US interest rates.
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PGGM, the Dutch pension fund investment manager that allocates the largest amount to the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market on behalf of end-client the Dutch pension PFZW, now looks after a portfolio that was valued at just over US $8.8 billion (EUR 8.1bn) at the mid-point of 2023, which has grown further above its strategic allocation […]
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