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Bermudian Dunamis Re and Scor's Atropos made notable debuts at the 1 January renewal season in the collateralised reinsurance and retro, industry loss warranty (ILW) and cat bond markets.

Dunamis Re emerged as a dark horse at the renewal, offering "substantial" lines on retro programmes and ILW contracts, while resolutely refusing to identify either its investors or capacity, according to the latest edition of The Insurance Insider, which was published late yesterday.

"We were very happy with progress at year-end and had a good deal flow during the renewals," Dunamis vice president Spencer Conway explains. "We are still actively looking at a few deals."

In Europe, Scor Alternative Investment's $100mn+ Atropos fund was also active in the January renewals.

Atropos deployed its capacity - a mixture of Scor seed capital and third-party funds - on cat bonds, ILWs and collateralised retrocession, the fund's manager Emmanuel DuRousseau confirmed.

2011 start-up Catco also confirmed it had deployed $1.25bn of retro capacity in its second January renewal season.

Capital from these markets helped push through a late retro renewal, as despite initial concerns about supply, significant retro buyers succeeded in renewing their placements. But all had to trade retention, terms and conditions for price, sources said.

Although it is difficult to gain consensus on rate increases in the opaque - and largely private - market, retro practitioners put rate increases at between 10 and 25 percent on average, depending on the extent of losses suffered in 2011.

In other start-up action, one of the largest family office investors in Japan launched Triton Re, a $30mn cat (re)insurer with a mandate to write property and casualty risks and invest in cat bonds, ILWs and sidecars.

As previously reported, New York-based hedge fund AQR Capital Management raised about $260mn by the end of 2011 and was active during the January renewals season, according to sources.

However, fundraising has been a hard slog for some potential new funds, with some launch dates postponed.

For the comprehensive version of this article - combined with full loss analysis of Costa Concordia and the Thai floods - subscribers can download the latest issue as a pdf from www.insuranceinsider.com