Noticias

ALTERNATIVE REINSURANCE MARKET SET TO REBOUND AFTER LOSSES: EXPERTS

Posted September 10, 2019 at 11:09 am



MONTE CARLO, Monaco – Reinsurance capacity supported by capital markets has declined over the past year, but many institutional investors remain interested in the market as it slowly expands to cover a wider range of risks, experts say.

An alternative reinsurance placement for U.K. terrorism risk placed earlier this year marked a significant development and more new coverages, possibly including coverage for cyber risks, could be developed, some say.

ILS experts and others discussed the market during formal presentations and private discussions at the Rendez-Vous de Septembre reinsurance meeting being held in Monte Carlo, Monaco.

The insurance-linked securities market, which includes catastrophe bonds, collateralized reinsurance, industry loss warranties and sidecars, offers about $93 billion in total market capacity in 2019, down from $98 billion in 2018, according to Aon PLC.

Capacity was in part constrained by capital “trapped” by catastrophe losses over the past two years that cannot be released to investors while the claims are still being estimated and paid, experts say. Some catastrophe losses, for example, losses from Typhoon Jebi in Japan and Hurricane Michael in the United States last year, proved to be significantly higher than estimates made shortly after the storms.

However, most ILS investors still view the reinsurance market as an attractive investment, they say.

“After two years of losses, if would be surprising if investors weren’t at least pausing and saying ‘before I stump up another whole lot, let me just understand whether this is likely to keep happening and what are the characteristics of these losses,’ because the loss creep was disconcerting,” said Mark Hvidsten, deputy chairman of Willis Re in New York.

Although ILS products have been available for well over a decade, early catastrophe bonds covered very high reinsurance layers, but in recent years the various prod



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