David Marra, Group Chief Underwriting Officer (CUO) of Bermuda-based reinsurer RenaissanceRe (RenRe), said today that new demand for reinsurance protection ahead of the mid-year renewals is trending higher than the firm expected at January 1, with RenRe seeing “really good opportunities” to deploy capital.
During RenRe’s recently held Q1 2026 earnings call, CUO Marra confirmed that the reinsurer is making good progress on the US mid-year renewals, noting that demand is strong and there’s good opportunities in the market, including in the “still highly accretive” property catastrophe space.
“We have already bound about half of our US mid-year portfolio, and roughly half of that has been on private terms. The Florida market continues to benefit from strong pricing, reduced social inflation due to tort reform, and robust terms and conditions. As a result of this improved environment, policies at Citizens are at a record low. The shift from public to private markets benefits the entire distribution chain, including increasing demand for reinsurance,” said Marra.
He went on to remind listeners that RenRe grew in Florida through both its acquisition of Validus and organically in 2025, and that he is confident in the current positioning of RenRe’s portfolio and its ability to access profitable business from existing programmes and new demand in Q2.
“In other property, we continue to shape the book to reduce peak exposure while preserving attractive margins. The business is performing well, with strong current and prior year loss ratios, reflecting the quality of our underwriting decisions and our disciplined management of the book. Terms and conditions remain strong, but pricing is under more pressure. We are trimming exposure in the most pressured areas and improving expected net profitability through ceded reinsurance.”
In the Q&A, Marra was pushed to give a sense of the pricing on what the firm has bound so far within its US book, and also if the carrier has witnessed any changes in demand from earlier in the year.
“The Q2 deals that we’ve seen so far are pretty much a continuation of what we saw in Q1, when our rates were down mid-teen for the portfolio, but that was split between closer to 10% for US cat and closer to 15% for International and Globals. So, we’ve seen that mostly continue,” said Marra.
Continuing to say: “Into Q2, we were still seeing a lot of opportunities for private terms. If you recall last year Q2, there was a lot of Florida business that we were able to access a lot of private terms. What we’re able to do with these early renewals is lock up our capacity early at terms better than the market, and the clients are able to fill out the placement from there. So, we’re really encouraged by how the team has been able to engage in that.
“New demand is actually higher than we thought at 1.1. If you go back a little bit, we were saying $20 billion of new demand in 2024, $15 billion in 2025, and we thought $10 billion was our estimate for 2026. That’s looking closer to $15 billion now, but we won’t know until all the Q2s are done. So, we’re seeing really good opportunities across the normal Q2s and the Florida book. That growth in demand, I’d also add is from a lot of core personal lines clients, which are buying new reinsurance because they have growth in TIVs and keeping up their programs with inflation. So, a really good combination for us to deploy capital into that.”
