{"id":5837,"date":"2023-05-31T10:49:52","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T09:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"httpss:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/?p=5837"},"modified":"2025-04-01T05:13:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T05:13:04","slug":"new-podcast-with-alex-powell-ceo-of-aegis-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/new-podcast-with-alex-powell-ceo-of-aegis-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Shock reinsurance renewals are the worst kept secrets ever"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ep171 Alex Powell of Aegis: Realistic, but with an added dose of niceness\" allowtransparency=\"true\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=p5u96-14159b9-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;share=0&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Tahoma&amp;skin=3267a3&amp;font-color=&amp;logo_link=episode_page&amp;btn-skin=1b1b1b\" width=\"100%\" height=\"150\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Every time reinsurance buyers face a hard market there are exclamations of shock from some cedants and brokers, while others seem better prepared for negotiations.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A recent episode of Voice of Insurance podcast featured Alex Powell, CEO of Aegis London. Mark Geoghegan\u2019s asked his views, as a cedant, on the recent reinsurance renewals \u2013 a source of angst and chagrin for many buyers in the London market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI certainly think we were well prepared. Our plans didn&#8217;t land as exactly as we thought they might \u2013 things were slightly worse \u2013 but we definitely saw the tide changing,\u201d Powell told the podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a crucial issue for many buyers. There is great value of laying realistic plans ahead of renewals. This can mean briefing the board to be realistic in their expectations, taking tough decisions about what protection is most necessary, where to set the deductibles and trigger points, and setting reinsurance budgets accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It can also mean marshalling quality data, about the strength of an insurance portfolio, and the level of analysis going into risks being underwritten. It means readying that data, ahead of the curve, to support the broker in their quest to find a better-than-average deal in a tough market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good planning can\u2019t guarantee everything will be smooth. But it always pays to manage your own house well, regardless what the broader market is doing. As the saying goes, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. In the case of this January\u2019s reinsurance renewals, the opposition showed up late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSome things came late, some even past the 1 January renewal date. I wouldn&#8217;t say that we were massively in front of it, but I certainly wouldn&#8217;t say that we weren&#8217;t on top of it,\u201d Powell noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This lateness arose from uncertainty among reinsurers trying to negotiate their own retrocessional protection, and, similarly in the capital markets, among capacity providers for catastrophe bonds. For less prepared cedants this led to disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Aegis had to adjust its 2023 plans, leading to changes to its own underwriting appetites, he explained. Property rates, in particular, \u201cleapt ahead\u201d of the firm\u2019s plans, he underlined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe thing about retention is that you\u2019re learning about it and adjusting for it, but you\u2019ve got to live with it. And until we have the experience, we won&#8217;t know how good or bad that&#8217;s been,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe were well steered, both by our in house buyer, and by our reinsurance brokers, so we knew roughly what to expect, but until we actually experience a loss, or net losses, it&#8217;s all just numbers on the spreadsheet. But I think we&#8217;ve preserved ourselves for a long time in a world where we&#8217;ve had relatively modest retentions for our size. So perhaps we&#8217;ve not felt the adjustment as keenly as others,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every time reinsurance buyers face a hard market there are exclamations of shock from some cedants and brokers, while others seem better prepared for negotiations. A recent episode of Voice of Insurance podcast featured Alex Powell, CEO of Aegis London. Mark Geoghegan\u2019s asked his views, as a cedant, on the recent reinsurance renewals \u2013 a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[10,14,39],"line-of-business":[20],"class_list":["post-5837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-exposure","tag-underwriting-workbench","tag-reinsurance","line-of-business-property"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5837"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=5837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}