Speaking with Reinsurance News at RVS in Monte Carlo, Ed Hochberg, Head of Global Risk Solutions for reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter, said that earnings protection and legacy were two key themes from his conversations at this year’s event.
“That’s one of the biggest changes in that there’s a greater willingness to head back into the water,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a one size fit all, however. Sometimes there could be some very straightforward solutions, or there are solutions that will need to be a bit more structured. But I think that we will see a lot more activity in that space over the coming months.”
As negotiations continue ahead of the key January renewal season, it will be interesting to see how the push for earnings protection from buyers plays out, and whether any innovative solutions come to market as sellers work to meet demand.
Interestingly, Hochberg told Reinsurance news that there is appetite for frequency risks, explaining that a lot of it comes down to when there were concerns that the market was under-priced.
“The last thing you want to do is be in a frequency layer in an under-priced market. And when the market is relatively well priced, then there’s money to be made. When you’re playing across the frequency spectrum, there’s probably opportunity to create some geographic and line of business diversification. And in an underpriced environment that diversification guarantees a loss. In a well rated environment that actually does create a nice profit distribution. And I think there’s a recognition from market participants that there are ways of doing this,” said Hochberg.
Importantly, he continued, “clients need this and they want this. This is one of the major reasons why they purchase reinsurance, which is to provide earnings stability, and in order to continue to have the kind of relevance that you want to have to your clients, you do need to be thinking about offering those types of solutions.”
The second dominant theme noted by Hochberg is legacy, an area of the market brokers are now more prominent in.
“I feel like the outlook is a little bit more uncertain. I think there is definitely demand on the part of cedents to transfer liabilities, and even more so there are those in the market that would consider doing it. There’s some very strong capital efficiency reasons and other reasons to do those transactions. But the market has contracted, there’s only a handful of players that can look at transactions of a meaningful size, and we’re still somewhat dealing with bid-ask spreads created from the US casualty soft market years. And so, I think there will be deals that get done, but we’re going to have to work harder to get them done. And we need patience as these things can play out,” he explained.
Looking ahead to the January 1st, 2026, reinsurance renewals, we questioned Hochberg on his outlook for the period and also his thoughts on reinsurer discipline and attachment points in the property space.
“Absent a big loss or some other exogenous force, I think you’re going to see continued softening in the property and specialty lines. And you’ll see relative stability, probably, in some of the casualty lines,” he said on the 1.1 renewals.
“I think you’ll see some movement in attachment points, but I would not expect to see massive drops in the required return periods for the attachment point of the first layer. I think there’s still a fair amount of discipline in the market. Yes, price is coming off, but it’s coming off in an orderly way,” Hochberg added.
As renewal discussions intensify throughout the rest of the year, and Guy Carpenter works with clients to match capital with risk through both traditional and alternative sources, Hochberg explained that the firm tends to be solution agnostic.
“Our teams in the structured area work very closely with our teams in ILS and on the capital solutions side, and we tend to be very agnostic as to what approach to take. Sometimes there’s a simpler approach which uses a structured reinsurance solution, but sometimes there are benefits to doing an ILS trade. So, it’s very much situation dependent,” he said.
To end, we asked Hochberg about the opportunities and challenges for reinsurance companies in the current market environment.
“I think there are some good opportunities to be had as I’ve mentioned. Providing these frequency solutions and smarter products that will be useful to clients, but where they have a very good chance of achieving robust profits. I think that’s fair. I think those types of opportunities will be out there. And I think the reinsurers who do look at that and say yes, we’re going to play in this space, they are going to do well. And I think it will be a good opportunity for them to create a strong portfolio of these types of transactions,” said Hochberg.
In terms of challenges, he emphasised that, “whenever you’re in a business in which you don’t know the cost of goods sold when you sell the product it is challenging.”
“Reinsurers need to recognise the challenge that it creates. We still have a business where in terms of providing capital to solutions there are relatively low barriers to entry. Where a lot of value is stored now, I think, is on the expertise side of things. And so, it creates a two-pronged challenge. You need to accumulate that expertise, but it also is somewhat of a zero sum game. It means that the capital has to be relatively efficient and that creates a challenge for players across the spectrum when they’re competing against capital that’s cheaper and more efficient,” concluded Hochberg.
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