RGA CEO optimistic about growth opportunities

While reinsurance is facing challenging times in property/casualty (P&C), the environment for life & health reinsurance is looking increasingly attractive.

“We see very strong opportunities in our organic business, where our clients—the insurance companies—sell a policy and we reinsure the risk in some form straight from day one,” RGA CEO Anna Manning, told Intelligent Insurer.

“On in-force block transactions, we also see a healthy pipeline in many different regions of the world,” she added. “The UK, for example, shows tremendous demand for risk transfer solutions with respect to longevity exposure on pension plans.

“In North America, we see a strong demand for helping clients to better balance their balance sheets, and restructure some of their risk that has become non-core or non-strategic.”

While rates in P&C are particularly under pressure in the broker-driven market due to higher competition and transparency, the operating environment for RGA, which labels itself as “the only global reinsurance company to focus primarily on life- and health-related reinsurance solutions,” is more benign.

“For most parts of our organic business, brokers do not have an active role to play,” Manning says.

“The biggest part of our organic business is individual mortality risk. If we think about the US, Canada, the UK, and other large markets around the world, brokers typically do not participate in organic business.”

RGA’s main competitors to its organic business are European composite reinsurers. On in-force block transactions, competitors include not only the European composite competitors but also a broader group of players.

Some P&C-focused reinsurers such as Swiss Re are looking for growth opportunities in life & health while shrinking their P&C operations to protect profitability in the current soft market.

In general, prices play a less prominent role in life & health reinsurance than in P&C, where products tend to be more commoditised.

This news story is just a snapshot of a longer feature on Intelligent Insurer. To find out more about why RGA’s Manning is optimistic about the prospects for life & health reinsurance, please click  here.

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