The industry should “stay tuned” as the revised catastrophe model from Risk Management Solutions rolls out, the CEO of RenaissanceRe told NU, describing the model changes and potential market impacts as meaningful.

Neill Currie was not predicting a market change from the model revision alone but from the combined effect of the model and early-year losses from catastrophic events in Australia and New Zealand.

Most Bermuda executives speaking on recent earnings conference calls said there was no Jan. 1 reinsurance renewal impact from the pending model change. Midyear property-catastrophe reinsurance renewals could be a different story, however, Mr. Currie suggested.

“For the majority of buyers out there, the indications are that they might want to buy more, or, if you're the supplier, that you might want to charge more. So I think most of the impetus out there will be toward price increases,” he said. He noted that such price hikes could offset some of the softening influences caused by excess capacity in the market.

“A lot of what changes markets is fear, and I think there's some fear out there,” said the executive, who has seen several market cycles over the course of a career that began in 1976.

“There have been losses in Australia and from the second New Zealand earthquake. Here we are at the very beginning of the year, and a lot of folks have lost a lot of money in these events.

“Marry that up with the impact of the RMS model changes and, frankly, another market dynamic—the loss-reserve increase at large insurance groups resulting in a rating downgrade—[and] who knows what's in store for us,” he added. “I think there are things out there that could meaningfully impact the market dynamics.”

Asked about the potential demand boost related to the model change in isolation, Mr. Currie said, “It varies company by company and location by location. There's not a one-size-fits-all answer.”

He added that there are actually some companies that will see declines in their expected losses based on the RMS model for their books of business.

For most companies, however, the model off-the-shelf would seem to indicate they would need more reinsurance, or that modeled exposure has increased in certain regions, he said.

Explaining the basic exposure differences from one company to another now captured by the RMS model, Mr. Currie said the model is looking at more than coastal vs. inland accumulations.

“It's more complicated than that, but that's the simplistic notion,” he said.

One of the changes RMS has made evaluates the friction of wind as it goes over land, he said, noting that past Texas events like Hurricane Ike revealed that wind speeds will stay stronger further inland.

“There are some other things they've looked at that maybe are counterintuitive related to properties located right on the coast. So it gets complex, but the biggest punch line is that for folks with exposures further inland, that model would indicate they have more exposure,” he said.

During a fourth-quarter earnings conference held in February, Edward Noonan, chairman and CEO of Validus Holdings, suggested that RMS-model changes could boost expected losses for affected territories by 15-16 percent, identifying such territories as inland counties located within 100 or 150 miles of the ocean.

In the past, he said RMS has assumed that wind was very concentrated at the shoreline and then quickly dissipated. Now, “they are degrading wind over a much bigger wind field,” he said, describing the specifics of the model change.

Some companies that “have done a very good job of avoiding the oceanfront properties and writing a bit inland…suddenly are going to have much higher catastrophe losses, and that's going to have to be reflected in costs somewhere,” Mr. Noonan said.

“From our perspective, we don't like the idea of relying on commercial models to dictate how we think about risks. So there's not a lot in here that's new to us,” he said.

During the Everest Re year-end earnings conference call, Chair & CEO Joseph Taranto said capacity in the property-cat reinsurance marketplace continued to be a bigger factor than pending model changes at Jan. 1.

“We haven't seen much impact so far…I am sorry to say—whether [modeled losses] are up or down to a degree, as it just seems as if there is more capacity relative to the demand. That's really more dictating the flow,” Mr. Taranto said.

Whether reinsurers are using RMS' model or another model, such as the AIR Worldwide model, “they are still satisfying themselves that the ROE [returns on equity] on the cat business and retro [retrocessional] business is more than sufficient,” he said.

See Related Chart: Cat Losses Hit Bermuda

Special Reports /

Bermuda Exec: RMS Model Change, 1Q Cats Could Turn Market

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