Donald Mango, Chief Actuary
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Hidden risks lurk in nearly every insurance portfolio. Unexpected accumulations, correlated threats and unimagined financial market developments can take shape quickly and severely. When disaster strikes — either because of a storm or an economic shift - insured and asset losses can drain balance sheets, impair return on equity (ROE) performance and destroy shareholder value. The cost of systemic and hidden risks can impact every link in an insurer’s financial supply chain, with today’s losses causing capital costs to rise for months, even years.

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Christopher Klein, Global Head of Business Intelligence
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Reinsurers have enjoyed a significant recovery in 2009. Effective and disciplined capital management in previous years and good-natured weather enabled them to sit out the financial storm and build up strong cash positions. Meanwhile, the broader financial services industry is still coping with the effects of the worldwide financial crisis. Stability has returned to the reinsurance market, though it remains delicate. But, by all measures, the savvy management of capital and underwriting has been successful.

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Financial Intelligence Team
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The link between a company’s earnings and its share price is intuitive and well documented. Equally logical, although far less studied, is the correlation between the volatility of earnings and share price. The favorable impact of stable earnings on market valuation is intuitive considering market capitalization represents a view of future discounted cash flows and unexpected earnings volatility reduces the predictability of those cash flows.

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Christopher Klein, Global Head of Business Intelligence
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Global property-catastrophe reinsurance rates increased by 8 percent on average through the 2009 renewal season, according to the Guy Carpenter World ROL Index. This follows declines of 6 percent in 2008 and 10 percent in 2007. In the United States, the world’s largest reinsurance market (geographically), increases were fairly uniform at the January, April, June, and July renewals, moving in a channel of 10 percent to 15 percent, depending on region, exposures, and loss history. Even with this reversal in the property-catastrophe reinsurance pricing trend from the past few years, rates have not returned to 2007 levels, despite the financial catastrophe of a year ago and the impacts of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

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Given the record losses in investment asset values, the rate of return on equity (ROE) for the Guy Carpenter Global Reinsurance Composite dropped from 13.4 percent in 2007 to 10.4 percent in 2008. The decline continued into the first quarter of 2009 — dropping to 7.8 percent. Reinsurers felt under pressure to produce higher returns, and so pushed for rate hikes.

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David Priebe, Chairman of Global Client Development
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The role of capital markets in the (re)insurance industry was uncertain a year ago. The eruption of the financial catastrophe within weeks of last year’s Rendez-Vous caused credit markets to seize and wreaked havoc on equities. Access to capital not in the reinsurance system already effectively closed. Today, however, the situation is vastly different. Financial markets are thawing, and equity values are coming back. Investors are showing more confidence in insurance risks — both directly, through catastrophe bonds, and indirectly, via equity markets. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are gaining momentum, as well. We’ve pierced last year’s cloud of pessimism, and the opportunities ahead are quite clear.

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Michelle Harnick, Managing Director
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A hurricane is headed toward a coastal urban center, bringing with it the likelihood of outsized insured losses. The storm is heading into Galveston, Texas. The risk manager, tracking the situation, is concerned that the storm could strike a heavily exposed region. At this point, one of three situations could occur: (1) the storm does not make landfall, (2) the storm does make landfall, causing much more damage than expected, or (3) the storm makes landfall, but the risk manager has laid off some of the risk using livecat cover. 

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Susan Witcraft, Managing Director, Financial Intelligence Team
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The financial catastrophe may be almost a year behind us, but we’re still dealing with the effects. Capital remains constrained, and it will be a while before balance sheets return to early 2008 levels. (Re)insurers have had to learn to do more with less — deploying limited capital in a way that maximizes earnings and reaches challenging return on equity (ROE) targets. With MetaRisk®, Guy Carpenter’s economic capital model, you can delve into the scenarios that could mean the difference between capital productivity and missed opportunity.

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Michelle Harnick, Managing Director
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September 2008 brought two major shocks to the global (re)insurance industry. The financial catastrophe captured the headlines, ultimately depleting reinsurer capital by 18 percent, as measured by the Guy Carpenter Global Reinsurance Composite. At the same time, Hurricane Ike pushed through the Gulf of Mexico eventually costing carriers USD11.5 billion. These two events have left the industry in a capital-constrained environment. While last year’s surplus provided a sufficient cushion for absorbing the blows, the days of abundant capital are gone for the foreseeable future.

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Michelle Harnick, Managing Director
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The 2009 hurricane season is expected to be moderate, but that’s no reason to let your defenses down. In setting your expectations for the coming months, it pays to consider severity as well as frequency. Most major forecasts address the number of storms anticipated — but they don’t account for severity. A mild Atlantic hurricane season could still trigger outsized insured losses, and an exposed (re)insurer could feel the shocks on its bottom line, return on equity (ROE) ratio, and even market capitalization.

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