Baden-Baden: Reinsurance now a ???strategic tool???

Industry luminaries expressed their views on whether current changes impacting the reinsurance sector are permanent and structural in nature, are a tactical response to short-term conditions, or are part of the normal evolutionary process.

At a panel discussion Ulrich Wallin, chairman of the executive board of Hannover Re Group stated that traditional reinsurance offers far more than just capacity. “Our long-term orientated business model provides extensive experience in assessing current and future risks, in managing risks, and in creating tailor-made risk transfer solutions.”

Providing insight into the changing approach of the reinsurance buyer, Amer Ahmed, Chief Executive Officer of Allianz Re, highlighted the increasing strategic value that reinsurance provided. “We are seeing a shift towards the use of reinsurance as a strategic tool,” he said, “to manage capital and earning volatility from a Group perspective, and away from a trading activity at an individual entity or line of business level.”

Brian Duperreault, CEO of Hamilton Insurance Group considered the impact of the capital markets and addressed the question of whether the reinsurance industry faced an existential threat. “I don’t think that the threat faced by the industry is existential. Yes, it is at a critical inflection point, but we have seen a number of inflection points before and it is usually a place where real opportunities lie.”