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Over the last few years, there has been a significant shift in sentiment among mainstream media and politicians, who cite the cost of reinsurance coverage as a key driver of the escalating cost of property insurance in the United States and nowhere has this been more apparent than in Florida.

The cost of reinsurance has been rising, as reinsurers and third-party capital providers, including ILS fund managers, seek to get paid adequately for the natural catastrophe exposure they are assuming, having been badly impacted by catastrophe and weather losses over repeated years.

Reinsurance has become an easy target for those looking to identify a driver of rising property insurance rates for consumers, especially given how fast and far the market has hardened over the last two years.

As an international financial market dealing in billions of dollars and with offshore centers of expertise, unfortunately reinsurance also fits a narrative for those who would prefer to shift the focus of blame for problems in the US property insurance market offshore, as well.

Which means it has become a contentious issue in political circles, especially in the US states that have been most affected by natural catastrophes and severe weather.

As ever, Florida is one of those states in focus and it seems that not a week goes by without mainstream press citing the cost of reinsurance as one of the issues keeping property insurance prices high for policyholders in the state.

Of course, pinning the blame for high property insurance costs on carriers’ expenditure on reinsurance protection overlooks all of the other drivers, many of which have been issues since long before this hard market came along.

Aside from the losses and the frequency claims that had been passed onto reinsurers, before the sector reset its attachments higher and reduced aggregate coverage, there have also been significant inflationary factors that have driven exposure values sky-high, as well as the excess and amplified cost of claims being driven by litigation and an industry that burgeoned with a focus on working to inflate the quantum of property claims.

None of this is unique to Florida either. It’s just a lot of this became more accentuated as it was professionalised there, while litigation and fraudulent claims have been something quite unique to behold in the Sunshine State.

Property insurance rates were bemoaned as problematic and too high in Florida well before 2017, at which time the reinsurance market was incredibly soft compared to the state of the market today.

The situation in Florida is also accentuated by the fact some of the domestic market insurance carriers have historically been relatively thinly capitalised, compared to nationwide players and so rising reinsurance costs have hurt them much more, while rising attachments have also proven problematic to their business models.

Which drove the state’s legislative to introduce more state-backed reinsurance support, which elevated the issue much higher and drove greater media awareness as well.

So, reinsurance as a topic, has been making its way up the political and media agenda and in the last year hit the state Governor’s budget, as Ron DeSantis set funds aside to pay for a study into reinsurance market cycles.

Earlier this year, Governor Ron DeSantis signed his budget for fiscal year 2024-2025, dubbed ‘Focus on Florida’s Future’.

There are a raft of insurance and risk mitigation measures within the budget, with some $237 million set aside for budget support of residential home mitigation programs and additional oversight of the property insurance market in Florida.

Within that, a small line item allocates $475,000 for contracting reinsurance industry experts to evaluate the impact of reinsurance cycles on property insurance rates.

There is no line item, that we can see, designed to pay for analysis of other factors driving property insurance rates in the state.

The property insurance market in Florida has been stabilising, with the effects of legislative reforms undertaken in recent years clearly one reason for this. While carriers capital positions have also improved, helped by a lower level of catastrophe and attritional losses last year.

This is also helping to improve conditions for buying reinsurance for carriers in the state, as seen at recent renewals.

But the fact remains, it is unfair to blame reinsurance markets for Florida’s high property insurance prices, or indeed for any other US state.

That has much more to do with the levels of exposure, inflation, values-at-risk, losses and all the aforementioned challenges with litigation, claims amplification and even outright fraud that has been seen after major losses struck the state.

We must not forget the fact Florida is ground-zero for exposure values to hurricane risk and while building codes and practices have improved, it remains true that any medium to major hurricane hitting the state can cause billions of dollars in losses for insurers and reinsurers.

At which point the reinsurance market always demonstrates its worth, as without it Florida’s insurance market would surely need to be fully-subsidised by the state government and its taxpayers.

Understanding the effect of reinsurance cycles on the rates property insurers charge in Florida is, of course, worth some effort.

Reinsurance rates go up. So too property insurance rates are likely to rise. But this has nothing to do with the true cost of doing business there, given the rapidly rising exposure and increasing values of property in the way of hurricanes, or other natural events.

The state might do better to analyse the effects of Florida specific idiosyncrasies, in the legal, adjusting, construction and repair marketplaces, as well as how those drove insurance rates higher over the last two decades.

While another worthwhile venture might be in exploring ways to buy reinsurance more efficiently, or how innovative risk transfer such as parametric triggers might be able to play a role and create different, perhaps better, economics for carriers in their interactions with reinsurers.

But understanding reinsurance market cycles and the influence they have on primary insurance rates may not lead to the kinds of learnings that can make much of a difference in the first place.

Supply and demand side factors, such as capital availability and risk appetite, are often driven by global factors, as well as local. Alongside which, there is a need for risk commensurate rates to be paid for both insurance and reinsurance. Subsidising that is not an industry concern, but the industry can provide solutions that might help add efficiency through pooling of risk and leverage of efficient sources of risk capital.

This market has itself been trying to understand reinsurance cycles for decades and in recent history many extremely well-qualified participants thought the reinsurance cycle was dead. That proved not to be the case, at least not in the way anyone thought.

The reinsurance cycle is alive and kicking and we’ve been trying to second-guess it for years.

We wish DeSantis and his team luck and hope they’ll share the findings from their chosen consultants.

I’m sure many reinsurers and ILS funds that deploy billions in capital to support Florida’s property insurance marketplace and the state’s inhabitants would welcome that too.

Florida Governor DeSantis wants to understand reinsurance cycles was published by: www.Artemis.bm
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Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the state’s insurer of last resort, is aiming to purchase $2.94 billion of new traditional reinsurance and catastrophe bonds for the 2025 hurricane season, which would take its total risk transfer to $4.54 billion this year.

Florida Citizens still has $1.6 billion of catastrophe bonds outstanding to provide protection through the 2025 hurricane season.

There is $1.1 billion of aggregate reinsurance limit available from the Everglades Re II Ltd. (Series 2024-1) cat bond that Florida Citizens sponsored in 2024, which will run through both the 2025 and 2026 wind seasons for the insurer.

In addition, Citizens still has $500 million of industry-loss based reinsurance from its Lightning Re Ltd. (Series 2023-1) cat bond that it sponsored in 2023 and which will provide coverage through the next hurricane season only, maturing early next year.

The cat bond program has provided the insurer with added certainty from its multi-year protection, on top of which it will now venture into the market to secure additional reinsurance or cat bonds up to the targeted $4.54 billion of limit.

To secure the necessary risk transfer and reinsurance protection for 2025, Florida Citizens said it is budgeting for approximately $650 million of premiums.

For 2024, the insurer had budgeted $700 million initially, compared to a projection of $695.2 million for for 2023.

The decline in premium ceded that is being budgeted for comes with the reduction in exposure Florida Citizens has experienced, as its depopulation program has taken greater effect in the last year.

Because of this reduced level of exposure, the 1-in-100 year PML is estimated at around $12.86 billion as of the end of 2024, compared to an over $17 billion projection it had for that figure in late 2023.

Recall that, Florida Citizens had reported its policy count as falling below 1 million by the end of November 2024. That decline has continued, with the figure dropping to 847,571 policies by the end of February 2025 and so the exposure-base falling commensurately.

Florida Citizens staff as a result propose buying total risk transfer of $4.54 billion, with the $1.6 billion of in-force catastrophe bond protection and $2.94 billion of new private risk transfer, made up of both traditional reinsurance and catastrophe bonds.

Some of the traditional reinsurance may also be from collateralized sources, as it’s typical that ILS funds participate in these layers as well.

In fact, at its 2024 renewal Florida Citizens secured almost $1.3 billion of protection that came from insurance-linked securities (ILS) and collateralized markets participation in its traditional reinsurance tower.

The 2025 risk transfer tower is expected to feature a traditional reinsurance sliver layer that sits alongside and works in tandem with the mandatory coverage provided by the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF) amounting to $394 million.

FHCF coverage is projected to be $3.548 billion in size, down on the $5.02 billion utilised for 2024, again due to the reduction in exposure.

Above that will sit a layer featuring the $1.6 billion of in-force catastrophe bonds and roughly $2.55 billion of new reinsurance and cat bonds procured for 2025, which will all be annual aggregate in nature.

You can see the proposed 2025 risk transfer tower for Florida Citizens below:

Beneath the private market risk transfer the surplus has been eroded compared to last year, effectively meaning reinsurance cover could attach from a projected $2.547 billion of losses in 2025.

At its 2024 reinsurance renewal, the Florida Citizens tower had $3.154 billion of surplus sitting in the bottom layer.

If Florida Citizens is successful in placing the targeted $2.94 billion of new reinsurance and cat bonds, giving it $4.54 billion of private market risk transfer, it says that it would expose all of its surplus and have a potential Citizens policyholder surcharge of $559 million for a 1-in-100-year event in 2025.

Citizens staff are now engaging with brokers, advisors and market participants to design, structure and price its reinsurance and catastrophe bond placements for 2025.

It’s worth remembering though, that Florida Citizens had targeted $5.5 billion of reinsurance and risk transfer in advance of the 2024 hurricane season, but only ended up buying just under $3.6 billion as it found pricing too high to maximise its protection last year.

Citizens explained that its proposed risk transfer tower for 2025, “is structured to provide liquidity by allowing Citizens to obtain reinsurance recoveries in advance of the payment of claims after a triggering event while reducing or eliminating the probabilities of assessments and preserving surplus for multiple events and/or subsequent seasons.”

Given the attractive execution seen in the catastrophe bond market for recent deal sponsors, it’s anticipated that Florida Citizens could come to market with another large new issuance in the coming weeks.

Florida Citizens targets $2.94bn of new reinsurance and cat bonds for 2025 was published by: www.Artemis.bm
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Third-party capital in the reinsurance market reached record highs in 2024, as broker Guy Carpenter, alongside rating agency AM Best estimated that it reached a substantial $107 billion at year-end, however, a key driver of the increase is the continued growth of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, which is the major component of third-party capital across reinsurance.

AM Best recently hosted a webinar which featured notable figures across the reinsurance industry, who discussed their reactions to the 1/1 renewals, as well as what they expect to see happen across the sector in 2025.

During the webinar, Carlos Wong-Fupuy, senior director, AM Best, highlighted third-party capital’s record performance in 2024, and then focused attention towards the role that ILS plays towards reshaping reinsurance capacity and pricing dynamics.

“I think that if ten years ago we were talking about ILS being a significant competitor to traditional capital, these days they are more in a converging role and working together,” said Wong-Fupuy.

He continued: “We see a lot of this increase on ILS capacity is actually from affiliated ILS funds, and a number of large-rated balance sheets actually have a ILS platform, which means that companies are working in such a way that they’re offering is sometimes actually contingent to having ILS capacity where they can reallocate risks depending on infrastructure appetite.”

Moreover, a recent report from AM Best highlighted how underlying ILS capital expanded throughout 2024 due to a large quantity of investors reinvesting their earnings across the market, which ultimately further expanded deployable ILS capacity.

In addition, Wong-Fupuy also commented on what role the hardening property reinsurance market plays towards shaping investor confidence going into 2025.

“I think that with the investors, especially on the ILS side, we have seen this reinvestment of returns. So, let’s remember, this is a segment that in the last few years is producing double digit returns, as close or in excess of 20%. Even with all the issues that we have been discussing, we are projecting something around probably around 15% or 17%, for the next couple of years,” he said.

“I mentioned earlier the risk premium that investors are assigning to that, so they are not expecting this to last for too long. Having said that we have a much higher interest rate environment as well.”

Wong-Fupuy also emphasized the need for a balanced approach to deploying capital and managing investor expectations.

“So, on the one hand, I think that the high returns that the segment is showing are achievable, but we have a cause of opportunity, which means that from an investor’s point of view, there are probably other lower risk alternatives which show the strong returns as well.”

ILS and reinsurance increasingly working together: Wong-Fupuy, AM Best was published by: www.Artemis.bm
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Paul Gregory, Chief Underwriting Officer (CUO) of insurance and reinsurance firm Lancashire Holdings Limited, has revealed that the company wrote a smaller retro book at the January 1st 2025 reinsurance renewals, which according to the CUO, resulted in a marginally better outcome for the organisation.

It’s worth noting that Lancashire is primarily a buyer of retrocession, rather than a seller.

Speaking during Lancashire’s full-year 2024 earnings call, the CUO explained that the company cut its inwards retro writings at the January renewals, as market conditions were “reasonably competitive”.

“We did take the opportunity to cut our retro book back. There was more rating pressure in that market, and as I said earlier, we’re a bigger buyer than seller so at the margin that’s better for us,” Gregory said.

“But, we took the opportunity to cut back some of our inwards exposure, given the rating environment.”

Also during the call, Gregory explained that Lancashire expects there to be less property catastrophe reinsurance rate softening than initially anticipated for the reminder of 2025, following the impacts of the wildfires in Southern California.

Industry losses for the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires are currently centered around the $40 billion mark, however some companies have suggested the total loss could reach as high as $50 billion, while economic losses are expected to exceed $250 billion by some margin.

For Lancashire, the wildfires are estimated to drive net losses of between $145 million and $165 million, while the firm recently revealed that the event has eroded “a good portion” of its annual aggregate reinsurance coverage placed at the 1/1 2025 renewals.

Gregory commented on the potential impact of the fires on rating for the rest of 2025 for different classes and regions.

He said: “For property catastrophe reinsurance, we would expect there to be less rate softening than we originally anticipated. We would expect to see a flattening of rate in the US and more measured rate softening in other territories.”

“There are, of course, a number of territories still to renew through the year that are loss impacted, and these will see year on year rate increase. So, overall, the rating environment will now be more favorable than originally expected,” he added.

Outside of property cat reinsurance, Gregory explained that Lancashire does not foresee any significant change from the firm’s original rating outlook, other than if directly impacted by wildfires.

“What the California wildfires do is act as a reminder that our industry is always subject to large loss events. It is also a reminder of the value of our product. Usually, large loss events of this nature are a catalyst for future demand, and any increased demand for the product will only help further stabilise the rating environment,” commented Gregory.

Lancashire wrote less retro at 1/1 amid ‘reasonably competitive’ market conditions: CUO was published by: www.Artemis.bm
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