Positive reinsurance trend to remain strong through renewals: Munich Re CEO

According to Joachim Wenning, CEO and Chair of the Board of Management at Munich Re, the positive trends experienced in reinsurance over the last year are not expected to weaken during the remaining renewals of 2024.

In his letter to shareholders at yesterdays Munich Re AGM, Wenning explained that reinsurance has been particularly good for Munich Re over the last year or so.

Commenting on 2023, Wenning said, “Insurance revenue in this field rose to about €38bn, driven by organic growth particularly in natural disaster business and specialty insurance.

“Reinsurance as a whole contributed nearly €3.9bn to the Group’s 2023 net result. Let me put this straight: these figures are spectacular.”

This despite the P&C reinsurance result being “weighed down by high natural disaster losses,” although hurricane season was relatively benign there were “numerous severe convective storms in North America and Europe in particular caused unprecedented losses,” Wenning went on to explain.

Munich Re, like other major reinsurers, has taken the opportunity to grow its P&C reinsurance business through the hard market conditions and Wenning does not expect any immediate reversion to reinsurance fortunes, for his firm at least.

Looking ahead, the Munich Re CEO explained, “We’re confident that the favourable market environment for property-casualty reinsurers will continue throughout 2024.”

He continued to explain that, in 2024, “The renewals at 1 January were positive for us. We managed to continue the previous year’s very high level of profitability and further enhance the quality of our portfolio.”

Adding, “What’s more, we don’t anticipate this trend to weaken during this year’s remaining renewal rounds.”

So, Munich Re is expecting stability at least, overall at the upcoming reinsurance renewals of June and July 2024, it seems.

With such a broadly diversified and global book, that’s perhaps no surprise, as while some areas of the market may be softening, such as top-layer catastrophe risks, it’s clear that other areas of reinsurance are set to remain stable, in pricing terms, while others continue to catch-up with primary rate trends as well.

All in, a positive outlook from the CEO of one of the largest companies in the industry, which should perhaps help to settle any nerves that a wholesale, capital influx triggered softening could be on the horizon.