Hard reinsurance market to sustain: Christian Mumenthaler, CEO, Swiss Re

Christian Mumenthaler, the CEO of global reinsurance giant Swiss Re joined us for an interview recently and explained that he believes the hard market in reinsurance will be sustained, at least for a few years.

During this Artemis Live video interview, Mumenthaler discusses reinsurance market efficiencies, the insurance protection gap, secondary peril effects, the capital markets and insurance-linked securities (ILS), as well as the current state of the reinsurance market and the outlook for the end of year reinsurance renewals.

On the outlook for year-end and beyond, Mumenthaler said, “We shouldn’t forget that the industry has gone through a pretty bad period with a lot of losses, not just natural catastrophes, also COVID and other things.

“Reinsurers, in particular, have been a shock absorber for a lot of the negative things of the last few years and, in the end, we’re all one value chain and it is necessary that every piece gets the capital from shareholders, and there’s a dire need for reinsurance to have a higher return, to go back, to have an average over time that is sufficient.

“So I see a huge need for reinsurers to become more profitable at this stage and so I think this will also sustain prices as we go through.

“Now, if you have big losses, I could absolutely imagine prices to go further up. If there’s absolutely nothing happening, we will see.

“So there’s this time correlation that’s going to be playing a role, but overall from an environment, if we have a normal load of nat cat, I absolutely see the hard market to sustain for a few more years.”