Greater reinsurance capital supply is good news for an industry facing increasingly interconnected risks, according to Leopoldo Camara, Head of P&C Reinsurance Northern, Central & Eastern Europe at Swiss Re, speaking ahead of the Baden-Baden gathering 2026.
“We think that is actually good news because more capital is needed to address the growing risks that we all need to deal with,” Camara said, noting that both supply and demand for reinsurance were growing in an increasingly competitive market.
He emphasised, however, that different types of capital play different roles in the industry, highlighting Swiss Re’s long-standing commitment to reinsurance and its combination of capital with deep risk expertise.
“Swiss Re capital has been committed to the industry for a very long time,” he said, adding that the reinsurer operates across life, health and P&C, covering both short-tail and long-tail risks.
Camara continued, “The core business proposition of our capital, the core mandate, is on the right side of the balance sheet. So, we’re here to pay claims. That’s our main promise: paying claims.”
The executive noted that Swiss Re combines its capital with risk expertise developed over more than 100 years, which he described as indispensable to arranging sustainable risk transfer, mitigating risks, measuring and quantifying exposures, developing new risk transfer approaches and aligning alternative capital where appropriate.
“This is our kind of capital. That’s the kind of capital we’re bringing to Baden-Baden, and we actually see that our capital is in high demand,” he explained.
On the demand side, Camara said Swiss Re was seeing increasing amounts of systemic risk, with exposures becoming more interconnected and therefore more systemic.
He identified four factors contributing to this trend: larger individual risks, greater geographic clustering, increased interconnectedness of supply chains, and growing digital and social networks that amplify risk propagation.
Data centres illustrate the challenge posed by larger individual risks, he said, with insured value concentrations exceeding billions and sometimes reaching tens of billions in very limited locations.
Geographic clustering is another concern. Camara pointed to recent hail events in Europe, particularly one in Switzerland that affected a significant population cluster, although not the country’s largest.
“The same event over Zurich would have probably generated a much higher loss,” Camara observed.
Growing supply chain interdependencies are also reportedly having an impact. Camara cited vehicle repairs following severe convective storms and hail events, where significant increases in repair part costs illustrate some of the effects.
Finally, digital and social networks can accelerate the propagation of risk. Referring to developments in the French high school context, Camara said such events illustrated how quickly civil commotion could spread.
“It shows how quickly civil commotion can actually amplify and propagate in ways that we haven’t experienced historically,” he said.
