Your weekly re/insurance round-up, ending 11th of October, 2024

It's Friday 11 October, 2024

This week, the headlines were?unsurprisingly stolen by Hurricane Milton, which made a category 3 landfall in Florida's Sarasota County?on the 9th of October, bringing damaging winds, tornadoes, life-threatening storm surge, and heavy rainfall.

Despite noting that it will take weeks or months to have reliable estimates of insured losses, Moody's expects the storm to affect both primary insurers and the reinsurance sector, with the proportion of losses ceded to reinsurers increasing as the magnitude of losses go up.

Meanwhile,?the equity analyst team at Jefferies has suggested that Milton’s insured losses will likely be more modest than initially feared, and while it will probably be a large earnings event, it is not expected to drive up property reinsurance rates in 2025.

Fitch Ratings echoed this sentiment, observing in a report that Milton’s effect on global re/insurance ratings is expected to be limited.

With Hurricane Helene?occurring just a few weeks prior, a new wave of insured loss estimates also hit the news.

Verisk estimated that Helene’s insured losses could reach $11bn excluding NFIP, while RMS suggested private market insured losses of around $14bn.

At the same time,?CoreLogic pegged the total insured wind and flood losses from Helene at up to $17.5bn.

In other developments,?Lloyd’s has warned of a potential $14.5trn economic risk from a hypothetical geopolitical conflict, while PPL entered a multi-year agreement with Microsoft to accelerate its transition from a transaction platform to a data-driven trading hub.

Elsewhere,?hyperexponential launched its first reinsurance pricing model?and?Munich Re Specialty made its entry into the Spanish Insurance market.

Cowbell also reported on a successful first year in the UK with triple-digit growth, and?MIC Global revealed it is to become a Lloyd’s coverholder for Greenlight Re’s Syndicate 3456.

Turning to the key appointments,?Aon appointed Emma Crookes as Global Head of the insurance vertical, while?AXIS Capital introduced new leadership for its Irish legal entities.

Howden Re enhanced its international broking and advisory capabilities with two new hires, and Amit?Khilosia joined Africa Specialty Risks as Chief Distribution Officer.

We’ll continue to update you with more coverage of the major developments from this week, while also keeping up with the regular news coming out of the re/insurance industry.

We hope all our readers stay safe and well this weekend!