Reinsurance News
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway is an American multinational conglomerate holding company, famous for its diverse portfolio of wholly-owned businesses. This page contains news about Berkshire Hathway’s insurance and reinsurance businesses, as well as its financial reporting.
Within that, Berkshire Hathaway has a meaningful insurance and reinsurance operation and under the watch of Warren Buffett this has grown into one of the most meaningful players in the global reinsurance market.
Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group encompasses GenRe, TransRe and its life reinsurance operations.
Given its size and breadth of operations, Berkshire Hathaway has famously used the insurance premium float generated by its primary and reinsurance operations to fuel its enormous investment firepower.
With such diversification and depth of capital across its business, Berkshire Hathaway is know for being strategic and tactical in how it underwrites reinsurance business, growing and shrinking its capital deployments into the sector depending on its view of price adequacy and relative value compared to its other opportunities.
Berkshire Hathaway plans virtual 2021 shareholder meeting
3rd December 2020
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has announced that its 2021 annual meeting of shareholders will be held virtually on May 1st. The format for next year’s meeting will be similar to the 2020 meeting, which could not be held in-person due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Like this year, shareholders will instead be ... Read the full article
Tom Macfarlane to lead Berkshire’s (BHSI) Europe expansion
1st December 2020
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance has named Tom Macfarlane to lead the expansion of its capabilities in Europe, by underwriting Downstream Energy Property Insurance. Macfarlane comes to Berkshire Hathaway with over 40 years of insurance experience spanning both the underwriting and broking sides of the business. He has held various leadership ... Read the full article
Berkshire (BHSI) appoints Lauren Finnis to new VP role
25th November 2020
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company, the insurance arm of Warren Buffett's global insurance and reinsurance company, has appointed Lauren Finnis as Vice President, Customer & Broker Engagement, for the Central Region based in Chicago. Previously, she was Vice President of Customer & Broker Engagement for the Eastern Region. Finnis, who has over ... Read the full article
Berkshire reports 9M 2020 P&C reinsurance underwriting loss
9th November 2020
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has reported a P&C reinsurance pre-tax underwriting loss of $706 million for the first nine months of 2020 against a gain of $472 million a year earlier, as loss and loss adjustment expenses increased by 48% to $2.4 billion. The elevated level of catastrophe losses during the ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway appoints SVP for Customer & Broker Engagement
30th October 2020
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance (BHSI) has announced of appointment of Renee Yozzi as Senior Vice President of Customer & Broker Engagement for the Eastern U.S. Region. Yozzi brings nearly 20 years and an excellent duality of experience to BHSI. She most recently held the title of Director, Strategic and Enterprise Risk ... Read the full article
Average combined ratio of the world’s top reinsurers declined in 2019
2nd September 2020
Analysis of the Top 50 Global Reinsurance Groups reveals that, year-on-year, combined ratios trended higher for some of the largest players in the market in 2019 as underwriting profitability dipped for the cohort. When ranked by unaffiliated gross written premiums (GWP) in 2019, the top ten remains relatively unchanged year-on-year, ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway P&C reinsurance loss driven by Covid-19 & prior year liabilities
9th August 2020
Berkshire Hathaway reported a significant level of losses within its property and casualty reinsurance business for the second-quarter of 2020, as the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and negative prior year reserve development on longer-tailed liabilities drove the division to a loss for the period. Overall, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reported ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty launches EIL insurance in France
10th June 2020
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company (BHSI), the insurance arm of Warren Buffett's global insurance and reinsurance company, has introduced Environmental Impairment Liability (EIL) Insurance in France. The new policy pairs coverage for multiple environmental risks with technical and legal support to help insureds mitigate environmental incidents and claims. “Our experienced environmental team has ... Read the full article
Berkshire would have written pandemic insurance if people had asked for it: Buffett
4th May 2020
Warren Buffett has said that Berkshire Hathaway would have been willing to write pandemic insurance at the right price if people had asked for the coverage. Speaking during the conglomerate's first-quarter 2020 earnings call, after the firm announced losses within its re/insurance businesses and a huge unrealised investment loss, Chief ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway reports $489m Q1 reinsurance loss, $55.5bn investment loss
2nd May 2020
Warren Buffett's conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter losses to its primary insurance and reinsurance businesses, in part due to the impacts of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. But the enormous largely unrealised investment loss of $55.5 billion for the first-quarter of 2020 overshadows all else in the Berkshire Hathaway results today. Berkshire Hathaway ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway’s Wellfleet partners with EIS Group on new solution
17th April 2020
Wellfleet, a Berkshire Hathaway insurance company, is partnering with industry technology firm EIS Group on an insurance administration platform designed to meet the evolving demands of the employee benefits market. In the complex voluntary benefits landscape, brokers and their clients commonly work with multiple systems, fighting to integrate with carriers’ patchworked ... Read the full article
Berkshire’s COVID-19 exposure potentially greater but manageable: Analysts
3rd April 2020
Analysts at Morgan Stanley have said that although Berkshire Hathaway could be exposed to losses from the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic in a number of business lines, losses should be manageable for Warren Buffett's property and casualty (P&C) reinsurance operation. As events around the world continue to be either ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway’s reinsurance division falls to loss in 2019
22nd February 2020
Berkshire Hathaway's insurance earnings dipped in 2019 as reinsurance related businesses suffered and dragged that segment of the Warren Buffett owned conglomerate to a loss for the year. The Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group fell to an underwriting loss of -$1.472 billion for 2019, worse than 2018's -$1.109 billion. Impacting the insurance and ... Read the full article
Insurtech Bold Penguin in workers comp partnership with Berkshire
29th January 2020
Commercial insurtech provider Bold Penguin has partnered with biBerk, a member of the Berkshire Hathaway Group, to address growing demand for workers compensation coverage. Under the arrangement, agents and brokers using the Bold Penguin platform will now be able to triage, quote, and bind commercial insurance coverage available through an API ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway unit looks to AI with CLARA analytics deal
17th January 2020
Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies has selected CLARA analytics, a provider of artificial intelligence technology in the commercial insurance space, as it looks to advance its workers’ compensation claims operations. BHHC will integrate the full suite of CLARA products, including CLARA providers, CLARA litigation and CLARA claims as well as its popular ... Read the full article
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