Third Point Re and Sirius International have announced a merger worth $788m to create a “top-tier” global specialty (re)insurer, SiriusPoint. The definitive agreement on a cash-and-stock transaction will create a new Bermudan company with $3.3bn of capital. Third Point Re will finance the transaction through a combination of cash and equity. Third Point Re’s recently named non-executive chairman Siddhartha Sankaran…
Moody’s expects further P&C Covid-19 claims for European insurers during the rest of 2020, but believes they will be more moderate than the numbers reported in the second quarter. Primary insurers and reinsurers reported a “sharp increase” in coronavirus-related claims in Q2 compared to Q1, as a result of the virus’s lagged impact on certain business lines, noted the ratings…
AXA XL fell to a €843m loss in the first half of this year as the unit bore the brunt of its parent group’s €1.5bn Covid-19 hit, but accelerating rate increases are expected to continue and may limit some of the damage. AXA XL fell to the loss from a profit of €603m in the first half of last year.…
Munich Re posted a decent profit for the second quarter of this year despite incurring another €600m of Covid-19-related losses to bring its total pandemic hit up to €1.4bn for H1. The company benefited from firming prices in reinsurance, a good investment result, lower than normal natural catastrophe losses and a healthy result from its primary group ERGO. The German…
Liberty Mutual’s second-quarter results were hammered by the combined impact of Covid-19 losses, higher-than-normal catastrophe claims and a significant hit from recent civil unrest in the US. But group chairman and CEO David Long said the insurer’s core combined ratio of 89.1% for the quarter, down 4.6 percentage points on last year, is heading in the right direction on the…
Bermuda-based reinsurance and specialty insurance group Everest Re took a pandemic-related hit of $160m for the second quarter of this year, which helped drag its net profit down to $191m compared to $333m for the same period last year. But the group also reported a healthy rise in both insurance and reinsurance gross written premiums. Its specialty and surplus lines…
Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS), the corporate insurance arm of Munich-based Allianz Group, has estimated Covid-19 claims of €488m in the first half of this year as second-quarter results were published. Allianz group has now taken a total Covid-19 hit of some €1.2bn for the first six months of this year, with €500m coming in the second quarter. The impact of…
AIG execs have told analysts that market hardening is the strongest for decades, on the back of Covid-19, and are confident they will not suffer big Covid-19 business interruption (BI) losses, despite racking up hefty pandemic claims in the second quarter that contributed to a tough period. AIG posted a net loss attributable to shareholders of $7.9bn in the second…
Xavier Durand, CEO of France-based international credit insurance group Coface, reported that the company has now entered into agreements with 11 different national governments to participate in state-backed credit insurance schemes to help businesses cope with the effects of Covid-19, and is in discussions to create such schemes in other countries. Mr Durand revealed that the credit insurer is in…
Chairman and CEO of US-based international insurance group CNA Financial, Dino Robusto, said the healthy rate increases his firm has secured in recent quarters must be maintained well into 2021 to make up for the long-term negative impact from four years of rate changes below cost trends prior to this hardening market. Mr Robusto’s comments came as he reported “challenging”…
