According to Brit Group Deputy Chief Underwriting Officer, Jon Sullivan, the current market environment is a positive for Brit’s growth aspirations particularly on the short tail lines.
At the 2023 RVS Monte Carlo event, Reinsurance News spoke with Sullivan about the opportunities he sees for Brit within the current market environment.
He said: “Improving terms on cedants underlying portfolios, supported by price and structural changes on their reinsurance purchases, are putting our portfolio in a much stronger position.”
Sullivan also discussed what the wider re/insurance industry can do to help tackle the inflationary pressures.
“Inflation is of course a concern, and one that came at us rapidly in terms of speed of change at the time, but is certainly a risk factor we are now more comfortable with. We have factored inflation into both reserving and pricing and are seeing our clients do the same. Understanding their actions is key rather than making sweeping assessments and applying arbitrary loads.”
Moving forward, Sullivan then highlighted how Brit can play its part in helping to combat rising claim costs.
“Rising claims costs remain a challenge whether driven by inflation, as mentioned, or by secondary perils and Brit has a number of initiatives to help control this. For example, in the recent Lahaina fires Brit used drone footage to get an early assessment of the damaged areas and then AI to scan the outputs to identify and get arms round the larger claims by getting money to policyholders quickly.”
Lastly, Sullivan then commented on whether he expects reinsurers’ tightening of T&Cs, particularly around aggregates and frequency events, to be sustained over the long term.
“I think we have seen this in the US first, with more of a reaction to regional losses and low retentions through the last renewals, with a focus on non modelled perils.
“What we have seen in Europe this year is somewhat of a mirror image in that we are seeing losses, albeit not particularly substantial ones, but attritional losses that are larger than expected and this is reflecting in how we look at those perils. As a result, I think that is an area that will be addressed.”
