Unique Perspectives

In recent years, the aviation reinsurance market has seen major new challenges emerge, arising from the current geopolitical situation and from unprecedented losses. To rise to and deal with these challenges, reinsurers will need to re-evaluate many of the assumptions underpinning the structure and price of the (re)insurance product offered, to ensure they can offer a product which is economically viable for the long term.

In April, I was fortunate enough to embark on a transatlantic secondment to work with LM Re in New York for three months. What did I learn? Well, J-walking is, in fact, illegal, sales tax is not included in prices and therefore 99-cent pizza is rather outrageously, not 99 cents.

In the wake of a global pandemic, rising inflation, the Russia/Ukraine crisis, increased global debt levels, and forecasts of recessions it’s become clear that this unprecedented and uncertain insurance and reinsurance environment is here to stay. Looking at the current approach to scenario testing in the Political Risk, Trade Credit, and Surety market. Does this approach go far enough to cope with the ever-changing risk environment?

Once all the hurdles had been overcome, with the micro and macro changes that have influenced the hardening property reinsurance market in the 1/1 renewals, most programs managed to be placed. This demonstrates that unlike the very challenging renewal seasons during the early 90s, there was just enough supply of capacity to satisfy demand.

We’ve learnt so far during the 2020s that the cyber market can handle attritional loss deterioration. From mid-2020 to mid-2022 the cyber market produced significant rate change and there was a complete re-underwriting of underlying portfolios, all necessary because of attritional loss from ransomware.

Over the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to the U.S. for the first time since the pandemic started. I travelled across five states and seven cities, attended the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) and the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) conferences, and re-connected with our clients.

Looking back now, I view my first years’ worth of development in different “phases” of learning. Within this piece I’ll look to explain these phases, in hopes of conjuring memories for my more experienced colleagues and providing reassurance to my fellow new hires.

As the impact of rising inflation becomes more apparent, those of us working in the surety market are closely monitoring the effect of inflation on costs, labour, capacity, supply chains and ultimately, potential losses.  As we did during the pandemic, all stakeholders should consider how best to support their clients and help them to navigate successfully through this uncertain period.

Reinsurers are rising to the challenge presented by the growing complexity of an ever-changing world, says Dieter Winkel.