32
November 2019
Bermuda:Re/insurance+ILS
PwC
The road ahead
for Bermuda
A burgeoning life reinsurance market and the anticipated
upward trajectory for ILS are two of the biggest potential
growth areas for Bermuda, while cyber risk remains both an
opportunity and a challenge. PwC’s Arthur Wightman and
Andy Moore discussed with Bermuda:Re+ILS what might
be influencing Bermuda as it heads into 2020.
SHUTTERSTOCK / MJGRAPHICS
The re/insurance market is facing some fascinating changes
as it looks forward to 2020 and the decade that the new
year will usher in, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC).
Speaking to Bermuda:Re+ILS at the Monte Carlo Rendez-Vous in
September, Arthur Wightman, PwC’s territory leader for Bermuda,
identified two key themes in the Bermuda market at present: a
burgeoning life reinsurance market and the anticipated upward
trajectory of insurance-linked securities (ILS).
“In Bermuda the life reinsurance market has really taken off over
the last two to three years,” he says. “There’s a lot of capital being
deployed into that area—we are seeing a number of incorporations
and a number of large deals being done.
“Over the last five or six years those deals have tended to be done
by newer companies but we are seeing some global insurance and
reinsurance companies participating in that space as well. It’s an
interesting development for a market that has traditionally been seen
as a property cat centre.”
Wightman added that the ILS market, both in Bermuda and
worldwide, has flattened a little over the last year or so—but he
expects this to change.
“We are seeing a lot of capital in the wings ready to deploy and
also structurally seeing some changes in the market with some degree
of consolidation. It’s fair to say that some of the more established,
longer-standing placers like RenaissanceRe, Nephila and AlphaCat are
tending to get better shares of the marketplace than some of the
newer, less established players.”
Another theme Wightman noted was a continued deterioration in
Bermuda and worldwide on some of the larger, more complex cat
losses—referred to as loss creep.