{"id":7019,"date":"2024-09-27T12:08:27","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T11:08:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-04-22T04:46:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T04:46:34","slug":"voi-podcast-with-greg-hohman-cuo-of-munich-re-specialty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/voi-podcast-with-greg-hohman-cuo-of-munich-re-specialty\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is the US E&amp;S market headed?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep225 Greg Hohman CUO Munich Re Specialty Insurance: Reacting to Disruption\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=wqq2y-16df318-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\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Greg Hohman, CUO of Munich Re Specialty, was the latest guest of the Voice of Insurance podcast.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greg Hohman is the Chief Underwriting Officer of Munich Re Specialty Insurance, which has been an area of \u201chuge investment\u201d from the world\u2019s largest reinsurance group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Munich Re Specialty North America is one of the four units in its global specialty arm, with a three-pillared strategy&nbsp; of \u201cexpertise, stability and partnership\u201d. The US business amounted to some \u20ac8bn of premium in 2023, planned to rise to \u20ac10bn in 2025, Hohman revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a headcount of 600, most of those people are based in the US, with four units. These include a public entity business and a North American programmes business. There is also a London binding authority, using coverholder relationships to underwrite US business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLast but not least is the newest of the four businesses within Munich Re Specialty North America is our excess and surplus (E&amp;S) platform,\u201d Hohman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said sees specialty as consisting of \u201charder to place risks\u201d, emphasising a strategy to provide a consistent presence in the US market, there throughout the spikes and troughs of capacity elsewhere entering and abruptly leaving, such as after Hurricane Ian in 2022-2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur E&amp;S team in particular was launched in 2019 and has seen significant growth through the midpoint of 2024, open to all of the new products that we put in the market, something north of 20 new products that we&#8217;ve deployed over that time period,\u201d Hohman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cE&amp;S in general is thriving,\u201d according to Hohman, with growth in recent years outpacing standard admitted US market business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He cited increasing demand across the US E&amp;S business, as more and more of those \u201chard to place\u201d risks find a home there. This demand has now \u201csomewhat flattened\u201d in financial lines, he explained, while property has seen a \u201cmoderate increase in submissions\u201d, but \u201ca significant spike\u201d in E&amp;S casualty business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hohman said: \u201cI&#8217;m speaking from Munich Re Specialty North America data. Part of that might be a function of our ability to just market be more visible in the marketplace, so our share of submissions might be outperforming some of the others. But no doubt, the overall industry is seeing all-time highs in terms of demand for E&amp;S products.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the hard market peaks, rates have since \u201clevelled off\u201d now, he suggested, with carriers also offering higher policy limits. He resisted suggestion that rates were falling to any great degree, but rather \u201cat equilibrium\u201d and \u201ckeeping pace with trend\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of this E&amp;S boom has come opportunistically, he admits, with regulatory difficulties and other disruptive factors shifting some risks \u201ccyclically\u201d towards E&amp;S, with the jury out on whether they stay within the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat said, I think that the ability for us to attract more policyholders into the E&amp;S space, where those policyholders want to stay here, because of the creativity that we bring, is absolutely increasing,\u201d Hohman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The amount of consistent, recurring or renewable revenue is going up, and you never know when the next part of the market will get disrupted. As one line of business or one territory seems to have some resolution to where there were challenges, there&#8217;s going to be something else that pops up,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>California property business, particularly for wildfire risk, has been a challenging market and an area of E&amp;S potential that Hohman said his firm had been keen to innovate within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe commercial risks that are in elevated wildfire prone territories in the state of California end up having to place their insurance with the California FAIR Plan, which tends to be the market of last resort for some of those policyholders,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The FAIR Plan is a somewhat limited product offering, and bringing a more comprehensive solution to affected policyholders has been a priority, he emphasised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe created a commercial FAIR Plan wrap, which is essentially a \u2018difference in conditions policy\u2019 that wraps all of the coverages that you would typically get from a special lines property policy around the California FAIR Plan policy,\u201d Hohman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Going live in the first quarter of 2024, demand has been high for this new product, he suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, the well-publicised adverse trends in US casualty claims and insurers\u2019 reserves being topped up for prior years mean that a focus on ensuring any rate rises on casualty business, however lucrative they may feel, are enough to keep pace with the risks and incoming and expected claims, he acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe critical thing for us is just to be selective, make sure we&#8217;re writing the right risks that we think are in the classes that fit the appetite where we want to scale, and that we&#8217;ve got the program structures and capacities that we&#8217;re comfortable with,\u201d Hohman added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greg Hohman, CUO of Munich Re Specialty, was the latest guest of the Voice of Insurance podcast. Greg Hohman is the Chief Underwriting Officer of Munich Re Specialty Insurance, which has been an area of \u201chuge investment\u201d from the world\u2019s largest reinsurance group. Munich Re Specialty North America is one of the four units in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[10,14,34,35,39],"line-of-business":[20,28],"class_list":["post-7019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-exposure","tag-underwriting-workbench","tag-exact","tag-exact-max","tag-reinsurance","line-of-business-property","line-of-business-general-liability"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7019","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=7019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7019"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=7019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}