Property catastrophe rates are expected to decline at year-end, but a number of factors will keep underwriting discipline, Brian Schneider, Senior Director at Fitch Ratings noted at RVS 2025 in Monaco, with Manuel Arrivé, CFA, Director, suggesting that it’s likely reinsurers could participate lower down on programmes to meet demand from cedents.
In his comments, Schneider noted the softening that the market is starting to experience and stated that companies are trying to keep away from that softening area, and have become more demanding as to what the returns should be.
“It feels like a different market,” said Schneider. “I think investors have better, higher expectations as to what return should be. We’re not seeing the ILS market push the overall market down, like maybe we would have seen in the last soft market. And we see that investors in the ILS space are demanding better returns for their risk.
“They have understood that risk is increasing, so they’re going to demand returns for their risk. Therefore, I think that those types of things will help to keep things disciplined.”
He added: “And then on the casualty side, certainly some of the issues that we see around – like social inflation, some of the nuclear verdicts and litigation funding. I think factors like these keep a lot of pressure on the underwriters to be disciplined in the casualty market.”
According to Arrivé, underwriting discipline is going to be one of the key themes going forward.
He said: “I would say that reinsurers are going to loosen the standards. They are starting from a very high point and they are still looking to grow. As mentioned before, growth is going to be difficult.
“There is also demand from cedents to insure higher frequency, and manage earnings volatility, which if they want to grow, they will have to loosen some of the terms and conditions.”
Arrivé concluded: “So, we will be surprised if there is not a lowering in attachment points on property cat going forward.”
