Aon Reinsurance Solutions Germany gears up for renewals and is prepared for Brexit
With the renewals season ahead and the final Brexit outcome still uncertain, Aon’s Jan-Oliver Thofern, chief executive officer of Reinsurance Solutions Germany, said he “doesn’t expect any significant disruption for reinsurance in Germany”.
He told Baden-Baden Today that Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions Germany business has a very strong foothold in the property space in catastrophe and risk as well as being in a good position in casualty, “and that is something that we are going to expand”.
“We feel that there is a bit of a disconnect in the automotive insurance market when it comes to reinsurance. We run a fairly sizeable German database where we cover 50 percent or a bit more of the German market in terms of reinsurance.
“If we match the terms we’ve seen over the last 36 months with the way the frequency of losses has developed ie, the attrition of losses but also the frequency overall of slightly larger claims then we see a trend that shows a decrease in those losses. It’s fairly significant,” Thofern said.
He explained that in the two different categories Aon looks at, which are losses up to €3 million and losses above €3 million, the frequency of claims has come down.
“We feel there’s a bit of a disconnect with this development if you look at the reinsurance terms overall. We sense there’s an area for improvement where we can help our clients to get a better deal.”
He said his business was prepared for the UK’s departure from the EU and that as far as his clients and markets are concerned most of the reinsurance markets that are London-based are syndicates at Lloyd’s, and most of them have their legal structures in place so they could deal very quickly with anything if there were a “hard” Brexit.
“We have been discussing this since 2016, so clients have made their own choices, and have either reallocated the business to a suitable carrier within the group of the partner they were dealing with before. If you think about Bermuda, many of those Lloyd’s syndicates have their outlets in Bermuda or Switzerland,” Thofern explained.
“Even in the event of a ‘hard’ Brexit, I don’t expect any significant disruption for reinsurance in Germany,” he added.
