Dear Friends,
When The Insurance Insider returned to Bermudian shores in late 2012 for its latest reinsurance roundtable it was with one eye on the past and one eye on the future.
A month after Superstorm Sandy the market was still in the process of digesting the scale and complex nature of the loss.
Insurers had begun to put out loss numbers for the event, but their reinsurers were still assessing the impact on property cat treaties, in addition to a wide range of exposures from marine, specialty, direct and facultative and binder business.
A major loss occurring so late in the hurricane season naturally meant the window for assessing the potential effect on reinsurance accounts renewing at 1 January was shutting fast.
While it already appeared that the loss for reinsurers would not be sufficient to cause a broad market change in pricing, the uncertainty around the event was clearly already influencing the negotiating process in the lead-up to the key renewal.
As such, it appeared the perfect time to bring together a high quality cadre of reinsurance executives to take a barometric measurement of where they believe the market climate is heading in 2013.
So, how did underwriters and brokers see the dynamics shaping up and what lessons could be learned from Sandy for insuring and reinsuring flood risk?
And with the obvious mismatch between industry loss estimates from modelling vendors and (re)insurers and the initial number put out by Property Claims Services, what ramifications might there be for industry loss warranties and other index-based reinsurance and retro products in the wake of the storm?
But Sandy proved to merely be the hors d'oeuvres in a feast of discourse as participants assessed the gathering momentum towards fund management among reinsurers, the growing influence of capital markets capacity at renewal and the re-emergence of the hedge fund reinsurance model.
Please click here to view the roundtable document. We are sure you will enjoy the read...
David Bull,
North American Editor
The Insurance Insider