During a fireside chat at the annual AIRROC conference in New Jersey yesterday, Paul Brockman, CEO of legacy specialist RiverStone International, highlighted the difference in underwriting discipline between the live and retrospective markets, emphasising that discipline should sustain rather than constrain growth.
The second day of the 2026 AIRROC conference, which brings together re/insurance professionals to discuss the legacy market, was a day of insightful and thought-provoking panels and educational discussions. The opening fireside chat saw Rebecca Wilkinson, Restructuring Director at PwC, discuss market conditions with Brockman, who has more than 33 years of experience in insurance and reinsurance.
Brockman, who joined RiverStone International as Group CEO from Enstar in January 2026, explained that, alongside getting to know the company, its culture and its people, a main effort since taking on the role has been shifting the focus from a reactive to a proactive approach, a vision shared by his colleagues.
“What wasn’t a surprise was the quality of people that founded the company. RiverStone International has been around for a long time now, and has been particularly successful over the last four, five years. The scale of the opportunity in front of us was something that has probably surprised me a bit, in terms of we’ve seen unprecedented deal flow this year, and we wanted to be in a position that we could take advantage of that,” said Brockman.
Alongside the internal aspects, Wilkinson highlighted the external market environment as another important element for Brockman to focus on as he leads a large and growing, global legacy company. She noted the softening reinsurance market landscape, which has accelerated this year, and asked Brockman how he’s seeing the softening conversation play out in the legacy sector.
“I think it changes the conversation quite a lot, because in a hard market, it’s all about recycling the capital and insurers and reinsurers being able to use their capital to redeploy into a hard market. As a market we respond quite well to that environment. But now, when you go into a softer market, the conversation changes a bit. Insurers and reinsurers are thinking a bit more about ‘okay, which portfolios are performing well, which ones aren’t?’ And how do they use their capital a bit more efficiently,” said Brockman.
He went on to explain that uncertainty always accelerates the conversation as well.
“Legacy now, for us, it’s almost like the perfect environment because not only do you have capital drivers, you do deals to take away earnings volatility. We’re also in that softer phase of the cycle where organic growth is more difficult for insurers and reinsurers, so that should stimulate a bit more M&A activity. M&A activity is always good for this market, either before deals get done or afterwards, because I think what investors want going forward is that certainty. We always seize the fallout around that as well.
“So, the conversation has changed, but I think that’s good for us because all the drivers are in play, and a carefully constructed legacy transaction can deal with capital relief, it can deal with earnings volatility.”
In the softening phase of the market cycle, underwriting discipline is always a hot topic as competition intensifies in the live market and the focus on rate and terms and conditions increases.
While discipline is important in all parts of the re/insurance market through the cycle, Brockman emphasised that, for the legacy space, discipline is slightly different to the live market.
“For us, it’s about challenging claims assumptions, it’s about challenging reserving, market perception, litigation, legal interpretations,” said Brockman. “The way to look at discipline is it’s not something that should constrain your growth; it’s something that should sustain your growth.”
In terms of future deal activity, Brockman again noted unprecedented deal flow this year for RiverStone International, highlighting the company’s reactive approach across all of its platforms.
“Jurisdictionally, in the UK, Lloyd’s, Europe, Bermuda, the US, Australia, we’ve utilised all of our platforms. We’ve seen quite a lot of diversity in terms of the deals we’ve done across lines of business, and we’ve seen quite a lot of diversity in terms of structures and different parts of the market,” he said.
