W. R. Berkley hits record $482m in Lifson Re sidecar ceded premiums in Q3’25

US-headquartered insurance holding company W. R. Berkley Corporation has continued to expand its use of its Lifson Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar through the third quarter of 2025, with written premiums ceded to the sidecar rising 53% year-on-year to $482 million, the highest level the company has recorded to date.

As a reminder, 2025 began with W. R. Berkley increasing the cession rate percentage, for the quota share the Lifson Re sidecar enters into with its parent, to a 32.5% participation rate from January 1st, up from the 30% it had sat at since July 2022.

The effects of that were highly evident, as over the first-quarter of the year W. R. Berkley ceded a substantial 82% more in reinsurance and retrocession premiums to the sidecar structure, with written premiums ceded to Lifson Re amounting to $171 million for Q1 2025.

We also reported that for the first-half of 2025, W. R. Berkley ceded $362 million of premiums to its Lifson Re sidecar, a 76% year-on-year increase from the $206 million ceded to the sidecar structure in H1 2024.

Now after Q3, that total has reached a substantial $482 million, which is a major uplift when you consider that for full-year 2024 W. R. Berkley ceded $417 million of premiums to the sidecar, which was slightly down on the $437 million ceded to it in 2023 which at the time, was the highest full-year figure yet.

This means that the company has now posted its highest full figure yet for written premiums ceded to its Lifson Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar structure.

Readers may also recall that, W. R. Berkley capitalised the Lifson Re P&C sidecar vehicle with $418 million of equity for 2025, which marked the largest size capital raise yet for the vehicle.

W. R. Berkley launched the Bermuda based special purpose insurer (SPI), Lifson Re Ltd. for the 2021 underwriting year, with $250 million in capital raised from third-party investors for the sidecar.

Lifson Re would go on to stay at $250 million for 2022, but was then later upsized to $380 million for the 2023 underwriting year and then renewed again at the same $380 million for 2024.

As a reminder, you can find details of numerous reinsurance sidecar investments and transactions in our directory of collateralized reinsurance sidecars transactions.