During Aon Reinsurance Solutions’ 2025 reinsurer panel, major firms said that terms and conditions (T&Cs) and attachment points have been holding, a trend expected to continue into 2026, while also stressing the importance of starting the renewal process early and ensuring transparency and collaboration around the quoting process.
She added that Everest is always looking for a sustainable risk-reward balance, and that this needs to sustain itself over the long term.
Beggs emphasised the value of clarity, transparency, and collaboration in the submission process, noting that early conversations with clients, actuaries, and underwriters are essential.
“If we look at US casualty, for example, we’ve asked our clients for more detail around the submission information, just so we can really differentiate their portfolio. Because if we use industry benchmarks, that really doesn’t differentiate one client from another. So, things like rate change, how a client thinks about new business, what’s the retention ratio? How much of the book is captured in the calculation? Or, more years of experienced data to see faster or slower development in the tail, which can only be seen with longer triangle data. So, items like that are really granular, transparent information,” she said.
“I would also like to highlight the importance of early conversations, even directly with the client, actuaries, underwriters, where needed, really to get a true sense of where the client is today and where they’re going. So, the best negotiations we have, they’re timely, they’re transparent, they show a clear strategy beyond really just the numbers,” continued the CEO.
Beggs added that the more complete a submission is, and the fewer assumptions Everest has to make, the more it leads to robust dialogue and allows the company to be more responsive—building trust and alignment throughout the process.
Miguel Rosa, CEO of MAPFRE RE, echoed this sentiment during the panel, stressing the need to begin the process as early as possible.
“This is always important (starting early), because otherwise you start perhaps not having clear information about what you are quoting. And then for us, it’s really important to go a little bit deeper. So, it’s not just the pricing tool, the capital chart, the margin that you need to have and so on. It’s a matter of understanding the strategy of your client, the quality of their portfolio, and perhaps qualitative insights that you cannot put in a pricing tool,” he said.
Dieter Winkel, President at Liberty Mutual Reinsurance, underscored the importance of ongoing dialogue with clients to understand their needs and what is happening.
“And the more you do that, the better you can come to a long term price. Yes, you work in your margin and your capital charging, all of that sort of stuff. But ultimately, you want to come up with a long term sustainable pricing environment.”
Winkel said that it’s always tricky and labour-intensive to find the pricing level that’s out there, whilst noting that the majority of clients are interested in the long-term partnership approach.
Winkel stated, “The insurance market is looking healthy as well as the reinsurance market. So, in that environment, the clients are more often after stability, and not after the yo-yo effect on the pricing up and down. But on the other hand, we need to make sure that we have a proper dialogue, and I think it’s helpful to get a view of what the leader insurance pricing intention is, and then get together what’s market consensus at the end of the day, and how does the risk get placed?”
Rosa added that he “believes in quoting.” He said, “In the end, what you are giving to your client is your view of risk, right? And it’s not just giving a rate-on-line or specific commission in a pro rata. It’s a matter of understanding and explaining to the client and to the broker, that you are an important part in this process. Why are we quoting or why are we seeing this risk here and there, right? And in our case, this is what we try to do. We are not super aggressive, up or down depending on the cycle, and we try to be a little bit more stable in order to try to facilitate that view of risk. Of course you need to adapt to the market situation, but we think this is important.”
Rosa highlighted that we live in a world with more and more risks, stating that it’s important to see this as an opportunity, though he warned that things can change rapidly, as seen with the California wildfires in January. Therefore, maintaining technical discipline is paramount.
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