Since the disappointing pricing at the 1.1. renewal the bad news on reinsurance pricing has kept on coming. April, June and July renewals were all reported as materially down by the major brokers. S&P adopted a ‘negative trend’ in its reinsurer ratings in direct response to the
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In the investment banker ‘101’ playbook for cyclical industries the reinsurance industry has arrived at the page marked ‘weak pricing due to too much competition; sell M&A services to our clients’. This, if you are a banker, can be a very nice place to be. Less so
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On the 20th January, S&P announced that – for the first time since 2006 – it expects a negative trend in reinsurer ratings in 2014. Of the 23 groups (including ‘Lloyd’s) it defines as ‘global reinsurers’ it notes that ‘nearly half’ are materially exposed to the competition
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Following S&P’s initial downgrade last month we noted that RSA faced a further risk to its rating without fresh equity. This reflected the fact that even prior to its recent problems RSA’s prospective capital was only consistent with an S&P ‘BBB’ range financial strength rating. At that
Read more →On the 21st November S&P moved its ‘A+’ rating for SCOR’s core carriers to a positive outlook. A return to the ‘AA’ range would highlight the remarkable transformation of the group’s profile from the difficult position it found itself in a decade ago. SCOR’s path to recovery
Read more →The IAIS, with its proposal for additional risk-adjusted capital rules for major re/insurers, seems to be joining the regulatory bandwagon for seeing these as a potential source of threat to to the global financial system. However, other than when they choose to act as ‘shadow banks’, the
Read more →During the summer both A.M. Best and Fitch assigned ‘positive’ outlooks to their current Lloyd’s market ratings. S&P did so last year. Translating the A.M. Best rating scale to the one used by S&P and Fitch this means that Lloyd’s is rated ‘A+’ with a positive outlook
Read more →Analysing a non-life re/insurer can be a complicated process; however some of the most important information is the data in the public accounts. This quick reference guide gives an overview of the more commonly used metrics and ratios. by its nature the guide summarises the descriptions provided.
Read more →Standard & Poor’s (S&P) recent release of the details of its review of the ratings of the 11 out of 13 members of the International Group (IG), which are interactively rated, brought with it a number of changes. The arrival of the new criteria has given S&P
Read more →As S&P continues to roll out ratings reflecting its new insurance criteria, those of Spanish reinsurers Nacional Re and Mapfre Re give a specific illustration of the impact of the sovereign rating. Many market participants have viewed the two reinsurers as fundamentally ‘A’ range security prior to
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