Analysis summary
Are ReShare vehicles a threat to reinsurers? Not yet at scale, but they are becoming one. A ReShare vehicle is a Lloyd's syndicate through which an insurer cedes part of its outwards reinsurance programme to an asset manager, typically a 10% to 20% slice. Only three have launched since the AIG-Blackstone deal set the template, with Generali's proposed vehicle likely to be the fourth. The barrier is dropping, though. Generali is targeting £60mn of premium against the £100mn once thought to be the minimum, and in a softening market every redirected slice counts.Subscribe to get comprehensive access to our exclusive analysis in the full platform.
With heatwaves in the headlines more often than hurricanes this year, reinsurers are having a relatively relaxed summer – but increasing signs of interest in what some are terming the “ReShare” syndicate model is a clear challenge for them in the coming softer market.
The AIG-Blackstone model – in which the insurer shared a slice of its outwards reinsurance programmes with the asset manager – set the template more than 18 months ago.
Growth since then has been relatively slow – with Generali’s planned vehicle on track to be the fourth such at Lloyd’s since then, if approved for 2027, as this publication revealed last week.
To date, this might not look like a major concern for reinsurers regarding lost business, as there are various restraining factors on their growth. Vehicles may only take a 10% to 20% slice of a ceded programme. As well, there is an expectation that the model will only work for the largest buyers with well-diversified programmes.
And some cedants might be concerned about creating a new form of counterparty credit risk outside their traditional reinsurers, if they go all-in with one major asset management partner.
Overall capital supply and demand is still the far larger denominator of change in the reinsurance markets, which has begun to accelerate softening this year, after last year’s profits boosted capital levels by 11%.
Source: Source: AJ Gallagher
Regardless, the ReShare trend will pick up pace.
The syndicates can open up access to new types of investors as reinsurers, in a capital-efficient format, while offering potential to leverage asset management gains (although not all structures focus on this).
In future, if ReShare syndicates prove enduring, they could help to minimise swings in pricing. The last 10% of a placement is always the scrappiest to pull together in a hard market, and having even a small element of preplacement could help to calm otherwise volatile pricing.
Lloyd’s has shown it is encouraging of new “ReShare” vehicles and its London Bridge infrastructure provides a template that may be more readily replicated than earlier predecessors like Chubb’s ABR Re.
After the AIG deal was struck, chief of performance Rachel Turk said that these deals could provide a template for Lloyd’s to compete in reinsurance rather than trying to write reinsurance “in the way that it was done 20 years ago”.
There is said to be a significant pipeline of interest in such deals, as no major cedant wants to be left behind their peers on innovative placements – just as cat bonds have become a mainstream tool in ceded reinsurance strategies.
This has taken decades for the ILS market, but transacting at Lloyd’s is familiar to cedants and a ReShare vehicle provides cover on standard Lloyd’s paper, arguably making the structuring less of a stretch relative to gaining familiarity with cat bond formats.
On top of this, the news about the Generali vehicle shows that the threshold for doing such deals is perhaps not as high as first thought – it is targeting £60mn of premium, whereas sources had previously discussed £100mn as a likely minimum to attract asset manager interest.
The Italian insurer’s twist on the model – involving multiple investors and without the higher investment-risk focus – could open ReShare vehicles up to a somewhat broader market, although it is still likely that cedants would have to be major brand names.
Allianz discussed its Oaktree syndicate last December with this publication as a case of seeking to complement its existing reinsurance relationships as it grew its overall cessions. But at the current market level, total demand is starting to ease back after a phase of above-inflationary growth.
And even a few more major cedants on AIG or Allianz’s scale succeeding in getting such vehicles over the line would make this redirection of premium a more meaningful trend.
This is not a positive dynamic for reinsurers in an already-softening market.
Anecdotally, some in the reinsurance market are already concerned enough to discuss whether cedants with these vehicles in place would be deprioritised relative to other long-term clients in stickier markets.
This is unlikely to be a realistic prospect if you look at the example of the ILS and cat bond growth over time – reinsurers have to accept that cedants will use all different tools available to them to spread their risk.
But regardless of the reality, ReShare vehicles are still likely to be a delicate talking point at Monte Carlo.
By Fiona Robertson
11 August, 2026
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