Your weekly re/insurance round-up, ending 24th January 2025

It's Friday 24 January, 2025

This week's headlines were once again dominated by the Los Angeles wildfires, as leading risk modellers released new loss estimates, providing greater clarity on the event's impact.

Of the hundreds of responses to a recent Reinsurance News poll, 42% predicted that insured losses from this event will exceed $40 billion, while 28% expected losses to range between $30 billion and $40 billion.

These projections are broadly consistent with similar estimates from?Verisk, Moody's RMS, and KCC.

Fitch Ratings additionally noted that at $35 billion, the mid-point of insurance industry loss estimates from the wildfires, around 30% of the aggregate natural catastrophe budgets set by Europe’s big four reinsurers for 2025 could be eroded.

In other developments, AM Best removed SCOR’s ratings from under review, and WTW obtained a license to operate as a reinsurance broker in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

At the same time,?Generali and BPCE agreed to form a joint venture between their asset management operations, creating a global platform with over €1.9 trillion in assets under management.

Elsewhere, Travelers posted a stronger underwriting gain for 2024 despite a rise in catastrophe losses and expanded its XoL reinsurance coverage for 2025 with a higher retention level.

In a new report, Aon revealed that global insurance losses in 2024 were 54% above the 21st-century average, covering $145 billion of the $368 billion in natural disaster damages, leaving a 60% protection gap.

Speaking in a video interview, Gallagher Re's James Vickers said that reinsurers are well-positioned after the January 1st renewals, but companies must focus on growing their premium volume or meeting targets for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, it was also announced that Everest's Board of Directors has appointed Jim Williamson as President and Chief Executive 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!