In a recent interview deriving RVS 2025 in Monte Carlo, Munich Re’s Clarisse Kopff offered insight into the evolving reinsurance market in Europe and Latin America, highlighting trends in demand, natural catastrophes, and the need for public-private collaborations.
This growth is fuelled by clients’ own expansion and broader economic and natural factors.
Kopff said: “Demand in both regions is growing, nominal exposures are growing. Clients are also experiencing growth, so we get that growth into us too. There is also inflation. And there was substantial activity in natural catastrophes in the past five years.
“There has been uninterrupted natural catastrophe activity in Europe. So prices needed to be maintained at adequate level and remained so. We had solid renewals in 2025 in Europe and in Latin America”
Kopff also noted that supply is increasing, mainly from traditional players, and there have not been many new entrants.
The executive pointed out a shift in the types of natural catastrophes driving demand. While traditional peak-perils like hurricanes and earthquakes were once the primary concern, non-peak perils are now equally important.
She said: “[Natural catastrophes] have been on the rise in the past five years. It used to be typically peak perils: hurricanes, earthquakes, windstorms. Now perils like hail, floods, wildfires, have become more frequent. We have all heard about wildfires recently in France, Spain and foremost in California where the industry suffered a very large loss at the beginning of the year.
This shift has resulted in a new dynamics, where insured losses from non-peak perils are now half of the total.
“These non-peak perils are an important part of the demand now.”
Global insured losses regularly exceed $100 billion, attributable to higher insured values but also partially to climate change. Yet addressing the protection gap is key for the long-term relevance of the insurance market, Kopff noted.
Roughly 60% of economic losses worldwide remain uninsured, a figure that is higher in Latin America mainly because of low insurance penetration.
To close this gap and make products more accessible and affordable, she emphasised the need for a dialogue between primary insurers, reinsurers and public authorities.
Kopff explained: “There is a challenge of accessibility and affordability of the product. This needs to be taken seriously. And hence, I think a dialogue is needed between the three parties, primary players, reinsurers, but also public authorities. Because the private sector will want a premium that is adequately priced against the risk to be able to offer sustainable capacity.
“And if you want to make it affordable for everybody, you need to try to mitigate these risks and have a dialogue on prevention. Public authorities will probably want to play their role in terms of building codes, upgrading the infrastructure, or choosing not to allow to build in loss prone areas.”
She added: “We can help by providing our data, we can give insights on potential scenarios. We can help to make informed decisions on what’s the right balance between prevention, insurance support, and overall risk sharing in the end. This is a necessary dialogue because we all want to try to reduce this penetration gap.”
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