In an interview with Reinsurance News around RVS 2025 in Monte Carlo, Achim Bosch, CEO of Deutsche Rück, said the company is maintaining its selective and disciplined approach ahead of the January 2026 renewals, while noting that he does not expect a general softening of the market.
The recently appointed CEO emphasised that Deutsche Rück is staying selective in its underwriting and prioritising sustainable profitability.
“We are not growing for the sake of growth; profitability is our top priority,” said Bosch. “This will make the Deutsche Rück Group resilient to current and future challenges arising from the market, climate change, the continuing uncertain geopolitical situation and the associated developments in the global economy and capital markets, as well as from supervisory and regulatory requirements.”
As part of the company’s strategy, Bosch explained that its markets division does not chase every market cycle.
“Instead, they carefully select segments where we see sustainable margins, transparency, and potential for long-term cooperation,” he said. “Markets such as Central and Eastern Europe, selected parts of the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Latin America are increasingly gaining momentum in our underwriting”
He reiterated: “We will continue to pursue a cautious strategy in order to maintain acceptable margins for Deutsche Rück and acceptable reinsurance conditions and prices for our customers, thereby continuing to preserve the win-win situation between protecting our clients’ balance sheets and our profitability requirements. We do not hesitate to increase our participation in programs that correspond to this underwriting policy.”
Bosch also highlighted that Deutsche Rück remains committed to its founding mission of providing reinsurance cover to German public insurers, while continuing to expand internationally.
He noted that reinsurance conditions have hardened after several difficult years for the industry, describing this as necessary following more than a decade of softening in certain markets.
Looking ahead, Bosch said he does not expect a general softening of the market due to geopolitical risks and global climate developments, including the rise in droughts and forest fires.
Regarding underwriting, Bosch explained that the company is focused on increasing automation in processing incoming customer data.
“The transformation of customer data into portfolio data, accounting data, and claims information is very important, as these form an important basis for our underwriting and quotation processes,” he said. “However, customer data still arrive in many different formats and qualities, no matter whether it is delivered directly or through a broker channel. Thus, the overall process continues to be quite labour intensive and through automation we will streamline the process and speed it up while at the same time assuring a high quality of information and data.”
Bosch sees strong potential in AI-supported document processing and analysis, which can relieve employees of their daily work processes and allow them to focus on customers and tailor-made reinsurance solutions.
He added, “Increasing efficiency through greater automation, such as by employing AI, also creates opportunities for intensifying our data analysis. Innovative methods can support us in optimizing our risk assessments and pricing.
“Deutsche Rück already uses automation and AI to optimize processes in claims management as well. We are working on our own use cases to interpret and process unstructured data from claims documents. This approach increases efficiency by automating data extraction and categorization, reducing manual intervention, and speeding up claims processing. In the future, it would be conceivable to use AI algorithms to improve claims monitoring as well.”
Bosch also highlighted recent updates to the company’s natural hazards risk models, a critical undertaking against the backdrop of climate change and severe losses in recent years.
He pointed out that the vast and growing quantity of data available today, combined with increasing computing capacity to process it, were the two driving factors behind these further developments to Deutsche Rück’s risk models.
He said, “For the recent update of our flood model, we have been working on a joint development project with the German Insurance Association (GDV) to which we made a major contribution. We have then augmented this model with claims data from our clients concerning the most recent major flood events, such as “Bernd” in 2021.
“We have also launched an update for our earthquake model. We have been working in close collaboration with the scientific community. In a joint project with the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, a risk model was developed for use in the insurance industry. Damage modelling has been developed in collaboration with the Bauhaus University Weimar.”
He stressed that organisations seeking to meet the growing challenges of natural hazards will require sophisticated risk modelling that is continuously optimised while factoring in the impact of climate change.
