During Conduit Re’s media call that took place earlier this afternoon following the release of the company’s Q123 results, Chief Underwriting Officer, Greg Roberts answered a question posed by Reinsurance News about the company’s retrocession tower, as well as the dynamics of the retro market.
He said: “We’ve made the comment that we’re very happy with the core of putting our retro at 1/1. Obviously, it’s not a big market so it’s a tough market, and the retro market maybe in the last few years mainly in the reinsurance market in search of margin.
“And I think the big dynamic right now is the reinsurance market maybe, too much of the loss, however, is captured.”
Roberts also went on to say that it’s “interesting to see the different strategies around capital allocation, especially in retro writing, and so expect to see some dynamic changes over the rest of the year in retro dealers in particular.”
In addition, the Chief Executive Officer of Conduit Re, Trevor Carvey also explained during the call that accessing the catastrophe bond market as an alternative form of retrocession, is something the reinsurer is “actively considering”.
Carvey stated that a cat bond will soon be “in the pipeline” for the reinsurer.
He said: “On the cat bond, yes, we know that at the end of the year it will be a useful alternative to the standard tower of cover that we bought, which is essentially over loss of the standard of the tower.
“So, we did a lot of work at the end of the year. That’s in the pipeline. We did some work on that, we’re dusting that off now.”
In their Q123 results, released earlier this morning, Conduit Re reported that its final premiums stood at $443.2 million, representing a 50.7% increase from Q122, with gross premiums written as also hit $278 million, which shows a 59.1% increase from last year’s period.
