The legacy market continues to evolve, and while it has clearly moved away from being a solution of last resort, there’s more work to do to continue building market recognition and resilience in order to capitalise on the opportunities, according to Andrew Creed, Group President and Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO), RiverStone International.
Reinsurance News met with Creed at the annual 2026 IRLA conference in Brighton, roughly five months after he took on the dual role of Group President and Group CFO. We discussed his new position within the Group, as well as legacy market conditions, and the sector’s ongoing transition to strategic capital solutions.
It was announced in July of last year that Luke Tanzer would be retiring in 2026 after 27 years with RiverStone, 16 of which he spent as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). RiverStone hired Paul Brockman from Enstar to take over as CEO, and at the same time confirmed the promotion of Creed to Group President alongside his Group CFO duties.
RiverStone was eager to position Brockman’s joining and Creed’s former, very close working relationship with Tanzer as a continued partnership going forward.
“It fits neatly with where I think RiverStone is today,” said Creed.” We’re now nearly five years into CVC ownership. When they acquired us, we were a UK-focused business with a UK company and a UK Lloyd’s syndicate. Over the past five years, we’ve focused on two key priorities: firstly, we wanted to make sure that we were the dominant specialist legacy carrier in the Lloyd’s and UK markets, in the UK market, and demonstrating a real commitment to that, secondly, we wanted to build out internationally and establish our operating platforms across Bermuda, the US, Ireland, and now Australia.”
Today, RiverStone operates globally through platforms in the UK, the US, Ireland, Bermuda, and, most recently, Australia following a local acquisition in the first quarter. Creed explained that Australia was the logical next step for RiverStone in terms of where the firm is with its international growth strategy.
“It’s a well-established international insurance market with clear opportunities in latent and long-tail liabilities that can transition into the legacy space, and a growing appetite for legacy deals. We have the appetite to continue to broaden down there, and that felt like a real next logical step for us. I don’t expect it ever to be a significant part of our global balance sheet. If it were 10 to 15% of our global balance sheet, I’d feel good about that. Having a presence down there really establishes that we’re an international group, we want to operate in all the key and core insurance markets,” said Creed.
In terms of the key challenges with the expansion into Australia, Creed emphasised that it’s no different from entering any other jurisdiction, with the regulatory aspects and building the RiverStone brand in the region in a resilient way seen as key.
The global legacy acquirer’s move into Australia followed a year characterised by generally lower deal flow, with PwC’s analysis putting 2025 estimated gross liabilities transacted at $5.4 billion, the majority of which occurred in Q4. Of course, this only includes publicly disclosed deals where the volume of transferred liabilities is known.
Discussing last year’s legacy market, Creed highlighted that while there were two very large, or greater than $1 billion transactions publicly completed in 2025 – a corporate asbestos transaction and the well-publicised Everest ADC – these were not done with core specialist acquirers such as RiverStone.
“We’re seeing counterparties entering the market, who are leaning into legacy liability acquisitions with the asset management side of the balance sheet as the core economic driver. That does shift the dynamic somewhat compared with where core retrospective legacy value creation has sat, namely active claims management,” said Creed. “Notwithstanding that, there has been enough flow of deals in the background. Generally, deals have been closed, but skewed to the smaller end of the spectrum, and away from where I would typically consider core for RiverStone.”
Overall, though, Creed feels that the retrospective market “continues to evolve,” something evidenced by the rise in hybrid structures, or forward exit option type products being issued, as well as more capital management type structures.
“When I look across the drivers for our deal flow, I’d say that at least two-thirds now are away from restructuring, so they’re primarily either capital solutions or they’re reserve volatility protection, rather than purely operational or discounted business focussed. That continued shift shows you that the market has very clearly moved away from being a solution of last resort, into something that is now much more on the strategic end of the spectrum.
“There’s still more to do, and it’s important that we as a market are aware of the different levels of strategic use. It’s great that the live market is no longer simply thinking about the legacy market when there is a problem to solve, but are rather much more tactically saying, ‘how do I support my business priorities across capital solutions, balance sheet optimisation and earnings protection?’”
Despite the progress, Creed acknowledged there’s still more work to do before retrospective solutions have moved purely into the systemic, although he sees no reason why this can’t happen.
“I’d like to get to a point where buying retrospective solutions is considered in the same way as prospective solutions. We’re not there yet, and that’s where we can continue to evolve as a market. That will come through continued education, closer engagement with our clients and our counterparties, and a clearer understanding of their needs. And it will continue to come from just demonstrating that RiverStone and the wider legacy market operate from a position of deep financial and operational strength,” said Creed.
“I don’t position it as being something that’s easy. I do think that it is a question of continuing to engage with the market, understanding how we can best support our clients, and consistently demonstrating strength through execution. We can have the best strategies, but delivery is what matters—and we need to be comfortable with a degree of volatility.
“Scale is also important because it allows us to have a broader risk appetite. With every transaction we do, we of course want it to be a profitable transaction, but that’s not realistic in every case and we have to be comfortable and resilient to that risk. That approach will continue to help us find the right balance between the legacy and live markets and this is where scale matters,” he added.
One recent and notable trend in the global legacy market is the greater inclusion of greener, or more recent underwriting years. It’s no longer uncommon to see deals come to market that still have an unexpired tail. That’s all well and good and clearly helps to raise the profile and understanding of the space, but as explained by Creed, the legacy market has to offer differentiation in order to have true value.
“We have to be able to be clear on what our strategies are, and therefore what we’re focused on, and how we can make a difference. It can’t be a zero-sum game where value generated from a legacy transaction is not incremental to natural run-off in-house in a live market balance sheet. To achieve this, we have to be doing something different to the live market and prospective markets, so that ultimately, what we’re providing to our clients delivers real end benefits. When I think about our differentiators, that’s where our financial and operational skillsets truly matter and where the next phase of maturity must lie.
“If we don’t have direct claims control, for example, and active claims management has historically been the key differentiator for the legacy market, then how do you continue to drive outperformance on the liability side of the balance sheet? By diligently selecting strong TPA partners, providing robust oversight and by working collaboratively with existing cedant teams acting we can continue to make a difference.,” said Creed.
