NewRe eyes a smooth renewal
Early signs at Baden-Baden point to a smooth renewal in property-cat, with participants getting down to business at the 2023 gathering to a degree not imaginable just one year ago. That may make great conditions for NewRe as it continues to build footprint in property treaty after a 2023 deep-end dive.
“This year it is already an orderly renewal,” Thomas Braune (pictured), chief executive officer of NewRe, told Intelligent Insurer.
Whereas at Baden-Baden 2022 players were forced to start off by asking “are you still open for business?”, participants at the 2023 Baden-Baden meeting sit down, open the books, talk through needs and already hint at price, he said.
“All talks start from the needs of clients, and from the structures,” Braune said. And the nitty gritty can come quickly: concrete wordings or loss occurrence definitions for clarity, exclusions for aggregation risks, etc.
“Some markets already started asking for quotes—it depends on the market and on the client.”
And in response, cedants have at least been able to hear “more talk about the direction, more or less, of the prices”, if not any specific rates.
To be fair, Q3 events, or lack thereof, made it easier than the year before. Messaging at Monte Carlo could flow straight into talks at Baden-Baden without being upended by the likes of Hurricane Ian.
That makes for good conditions for NewRe, Munich Re’s unit for complex risks and bespoke solutions by name, but increasingly a name in property treaty after a deeper step into the treaty world for the 2023 reset.
NewRe continues to sit down to talks with property-cat cedants with an inquiry if they need structured solutions for gaps left in treaty programmes by the harsh realities of the 2023 reset. “It’s not something everyone is asking for,” Braune says. “Cedants are still trying to continue with their current structures: they want to have stability.”
No harm, given NewRe’s newfound appetite for property-cat treaty and NewRe remains open for business with capacity for existing clients. Less so for casualty, where NewRe sounds cool, able to make a showing for existing clients, but eschewing growth.
“What we did in the past year was expand and grow the book substantially; we wanted to offer our clients capacity,” Braune said. “No change in strategy this year also.”
NewRe, with a caveat for adequate pricing that has a strong risk-adjusted feel to it, has added capacity for cedants with added demands. Braune’s expectations: “Cedants will need more on the top of programmes.”
The 2023 property-cat book, surging to top the scales at NewRe, did bring some learnings around the array of small to mid-sized events. And inflation remains a jaw-dropper for any number of replacement and repair costs across lines, forcing the risk-adjusted pricing philosophy.
“For me it proves how worthwhile it is to buy reinsurance,” Braune says of 2023 learnings.
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