At the 67th Rendez-Vous de Septembre in Monte Carlo last week, Reinsurance News held its annual executive roundtable, during which eight experts and leaders from across the industry discussed the sustainability of current market conditions, the outlook for the 2026 renewals and beyond, reinsurer discipline, the casualty space, while the role of alternative capital, MGAs, and the potential of advanced technology and AI was also debated.
Sponsored by AM Specialty Insurance Company (ASIC) and PwC, the 2025 Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous Executive Roundtable was our third, and began with an overview of the current reinsurance market environment, and whether trends can be sustained heading into next year.
“The current market, I think everyone would be in agreement, is a hard market, and there are many facets that play into that,” said Shevawn Barder, Founder and CEO of ASIC. “There’s the cost of money, the economic cost. In the US, you have inflation. Even if you take as a bellwether the admitted market in the United States, and you look at personal lines as an example, you’re seeing homeowners insurance doubling in costs, and you’re seeing car insurance prices increasing incredibly. Even that capacity is limited. You have the California wildfires; you have the litigation coming out of the California wildfires. You have inflation running at over 3%. You have an inflationary cycle in the rest of the world. You have geopolitical discontent.”
All of these factors, explained Barder, feed into the risk transfer space because the essence of insurance is that it creates stability in society, and is a necessary commodity to create stability in the economy.
“So, personally, when I look at it from my perspective, I think that the market will hold. There are elements, pockets within the overall equation that might temper or soften. But I think generally, from my perspective, being an E&S CEO in the US market, we expect consistency in the market to hold. I don’t expect any dramatic change this year,” added Barder.
For the most part, roundtable participants agreed that although the market is softening it is still hard, with opportunities to innovate in a healthy and competitive landscape.
“I think that the reinsurance industry is in a very healthy position. If you look at capital levels, it’s extremely healthy. It is beating its cost of capital quite nicely. And so, I think it’s with that background and perspective that we consider why it might be softening. Still, it remains in a very healthy and competitive position at this time,” said Matt Britten, Partner, Insurance at PwC.
He went on to note that the majority of reinsurers recognised that the action the sector took in 2023 has been the reason for solid profitability, not because there’s been an absence of losses.
“The favorable environment has been achieved because they drove for rate, they firmed up terms and conditions, they moved away from providing earnings protection. All of those actions have resulted in returns that are adequate, beating the cost of capital, but not far exceeding the cost of capital,” continued Britten.
Alongside the softening hard market and the outlook for the January property and property cat renewals, which drew comments on the cost of capital, investment income, attachment points, aggregate protection, frequency risks, rising annual insured losses from natural disasters, and the need for innovation, the casualty sector was debated by participants.
One participant said that it was very challenging to know where we are in the casualty cycle, with optimism from the primary insurance side but a fair amount of pain still being felt on the reinsurance side, while another highlighted the potential role of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) sector in casualty.
On the day, participants also commented on capital raises and the notable lack of new market entrants, which some suggested has helped to maintain discipline and market hardening. Here, ILS and alternative capital structures such as sidecars and catastrophe bonds were discussed again, as this side of the market continues to expand alongside the traditional space.
Later in the roundtable, the conversation turned to technology and the potential influence of AI, including how to balance advancements with talent development and the need to retain talent, and participants also offered some thoughts on the MGA sector.
One of the main themes from our annual Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous Executive Roundtable was finding the right balance, in terms of earnings but also between what reinsurers want to sell and what clients want to buy. Arguably, balance was the word of the day, and it was interesting to hear the thoughts of re/insurers, brokers and the advisory side of the market as to what balance means for them as the reinsurance industry approaches year-end, with 2025 poised to be another robust year of profitability for the sector.
For this year’s Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous Executive Roundtable we were joined by the following participants:
- Shevawn Barder, Founder & CEO, AM Specialty Insurance Company.
- Matt Britten, Partner, Insurance, PwC.
- Amanda Lyons, CEO, Aon Reinsurance Solutions, Bermuda.
- Martin Boreham, Director of Underwriting, Head of Liability & Active Underwriter, Africa Specialty Risks.
- Chirag Shah, Global Head of Casualty, Gallagher Re.
- Jennifer Paretchan, Global Head of Distribution and Market Relations, Guy Carpenter.
- David Govrin, Group President & CEO Global Reinsurance, SiriusPoint.
- Marc Haushofer, Executive Director, International Business Development, VIG Re.
Stay tuned as we’ll be releasing the full 2025 Reinsurance News Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous Executive Roundtable, sponsored by AM Specialty Insurance Company and PwC, in the coming weeks, which will include more commentary from our sponsor and valuable insights from all of the other participants.
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