Trading Risk December 2019

Amid an uncertain year for the life insurance segment, mortality and value-in-force transactions remained the mainstay of life ILS managers as fundraising tapered off after a 2018 growth spurt.

Lead insurers on Aon’s flagship $300mn broking facility have renewed their participation with a reduction in fees, according to sister publication The Insurance Insider.

Swiss Re ceded an additional $900mn of risk to the alternative reinsurance market in 2019.

RenaissanceRe CEO Kevin O’Donnell estimated the market took $12bn of losses and brought in $20bn of new capital in 2017.

The main disrupted segments are still aggregate retro and sidecar vehicles, where negotiations over the level of trapped capital have held up the renewal process.

Sources are expecting some $5bn-trigger second-event covers to pay out as a result of the Typhoon.

Issuance has picked up in the third quarter of the year with a number of large sponsors including Everest Re and Axa XL entering the market in the fourth quarter.

The 2010s are about to end and over the past decade the ILS market has gone through an adolescent growth spurt – heading into 2020 as a far bigger and more complex entity than it was.

People moves in the ILS market December 2019.

Willis Towers Watson has tipped that greater focus will be drawn to ILS domiciles and structures in 2020 amid an “unusual amount of innovation” from existing and emerging jurisdictions.

Brit has confirmed further details of the structure of its new Lloyd’s specialty fund, which will take a whole account slice of risk from its Syndicate 2988, using a corporate member investment structure.

Most people describing the ILS manager world might break the peer group into three broad categories: reinsurer-affiliated platforms, independent owner-operated firms and asset manager-backed vehicles. Does the market need another category?