Capital Markets Reinsurance, Inc

Abstract

After the property catastrophe losses of 1992 (Hurricane Andrew), 2001 (9/11-World Trade Center), and 2005 (Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma), capital of existing reinsurers was depleted and had to be replaced, and the typical response was to issue new equity and to raise premiums. Increased premiums attract new, or “clean sheet,” reinsurance companies. In 1992, along with a host of new traditional reinsurers, new competition came into the market in the form of direct absorption of reinsurance risk by the capital markets via the issuance of insurance-linked securities and derivatives. The purpose of this article is to compare and contrast capital markets reinsurance with traditional reinsurance mechanisms. Capital markets reinsurance behaves similarly to traditional markets in many ways including underwriting and peril composition, pricing, and non-price behavior. For reasons such as higher balance sheet leverage and more liberal investment guidelines, the traditional reinsurance market enjoys a higher return on capital, but that does not mitigate the important and growing role of capital markets reinsurance. Ironically, such a rate-of-return comparison is made possible largely by the transparency of the insurance-linked securities market.