Bermuda-based reinsurer RenaissanceRe’s (RenRe) group chief underwriting officer (CUO) David Marra said today that new demand trends for reinsurance protection ahead of mid-year renewals are higher than the company’s expectations on January 1 and that RenRe sees “really good opportunities” to deploy capital.
During RenRe’s recent Q1 2026 earnings call, CUO Marra confirmed that the reinsurer was making good progress on U.S. mid-year renewals, noting that demand was strong and good opportunities existed in the market, including in the real estate catastrophe segment, which “remains highly accretive.”
“We have tied up approximately half of our mid-year U.S. portfolio, approximately half of which are private terms. The Florida market continues to benefit from strong pricing, lower social inflation from tort reform, and sound terms and conditions. Citizen policies are at historically low levels due to the improving environment. The shift from public to private markets benefits the entire distribution chain, including increasing demand for reinsurance,” Marra said.
He went on to remind the audience that RenRe has growth in Florida through the Validus acquisition as well as organic growth through 2025, and he is confident in the current positioning of RenRe’s portfolio and its ability to generate profitable business from existing programs and new demand in the second quarter.
“In other properties, we continue to shape the book to reduce peak risk while maintaining attractive margins. The business is performing well, with high loss ratios both currently and last year, reflecting the quality of our underwriting decisions and our disciplined management of the book. Terms and conditions remain strong, but pricing is under greater pressure. We are reducing exposure in the most stressed areas and improving expected net profit through ceded reinsurance.”
During the Q&A, Marra was forced to reveal how the company’s pricing has been on its U.S. books to date and whether the airline has witnessed changes in demand from earlier this year.
“The second-quarter trading we’ve seen so far is pretty much a continuation of the first-quarter trading, when our portfolio rates were down 10%, but rates were closer to 10% on U.S. cats and closer to 15% on international and global bonds. So we’re seeing that mostly continue,” Marra said.
Continued: “Going into the second quarter, we still see a lot of opportunity on private terms. If you remember last year in the second quarter, we were able to get a lot of business in Florida on a lot of private terms. What we’ve been able to do with these early renewals is lock in our capacity early on terms that are better than the market, and customers are able to fill positions from there. So we’re very encouraged by the way the team has been able to participate in that.”
“New demand is actually higher than we expected at 1.1. If you look back, we said new demand was $20 billion in 2024, $15 billion in 2025, and we thought we expected $10 billion in 2026. Now it’s looking closer to 150 Billion, but we won’t know until all second quarter is completed. So, we see very good opportunities on the books in the normal second quarter and I would also add that there’s demand from a lot of our core personal lines customers who are buying new reinsurance as their TIVs grow and maintain their plans through inflation, so that’s a very good mix for us to deploy capital.”