XL Catlin seeks respect rather than size post merger
While many reinsurers increasingly seek size and scale, XL Catlin instead wants to be the best, Charles Cooper, chief executive, reinsurance, told Monte Carlo Today, adding that the integration of XL and Catlin is now complete.
“Our plans have been fairly consistent over the last few years in that we are focusing on building out a world-class reinsurance platform,” he said.
“The strategic combination of XL and Catlin created a top 10 global P&C reinsurer and we have market-leading capabilities in all four of the largest reinsurance markets: Bermuda, the US, London and Europe.”
Cooper pointed out that the company also has a presence in the emerging regional wholesale hubs, Singapore and Dubai, along with Miami. In addition, XL Catlin has local offices in smaller regional markets such as Australia, Canada and Italy.
According to Cooper, the company sees a broad spread of reinsurance business with this platform and it’s starting to realise the strategic value of having deep but broad relationships with big reinsurance buyers.
The integration process between XL and Catlin is now complete, he said.
“Integration is behind us; we are now fully merged with the last piece being data integration, which takes the longest time. We ran two reinsurance platforms in parallel while we took the time to integrate the data.
“There was an inefficiency in it, but we wanted to err on the side of making sure we didn’t try to stuff everything into one system immediately and have errors. We kept running them in parallel, but now we have everything on one platform.”
Asked if he was aiming for any particular position in the top 10 of global reinsurers Cooper stressed that he did not have a goal in mind.
“I don’t say: ‘listen, we need to be number five or number six’, or anything like that. We have a $10 billion insurance business, and we are unique in the reinsurance market if you think that a lot of players in the top 10 peer group are busy building out insurance platforms.
“We’re not doing that. We have an established insurance business which allows us to focus from a timing standpoint to build it at the right time with a focus on profitability, rather than any kind of market position. I’m more focused on being the most respected reinsurer.
“I’m not sure it matters in terms of being the largest, I would rather be the reinsurer of choice for our clients.”
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