Eric Andersen, president of global insurance and reinsurance brokerage firm Aon, said the reinsurance market is built to handle large-scale disasters like Hurricanes Helen and Milton.
Hurricane Helen is the sixth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season and the fourth to make landfall in the United States of the season, hitting west-southwest of Perry, Taylor County, Florida, on September 27, 2024 . 4, maximum sustained wind speed of 140 mph.
However, not long after Helen made landfall in the Big Bend region of the Florida coast, Hurricane Milton made landfall in southwest Florida on October 9, 2024.
During Aon’s Q3 2024 earnings call today, Andersen noted how the reinsurance brokerage environment could become more favorable heading into 2025.
“The reinsurance market is built to handle events like Helen and Milton. That’s why it exists. It’s doing a great job. Money is flowing into the region to help rebuild,” he said. So, in that respect, it’s okay.
“Going into the fall, I would say there was definitely pressure from customers, but based on the market movements over the past three years, I think there was appropriate pressure on pricing and attachment points. As you change your position, your program changes.”
He continued: “Certainly, there’s a discussion going on about whether posting these two events will flatten the price. Does it slow down the rate of descent? But that’s how I want to express it. And it’s faster. You can say that.”
Andersen went on to say that there is still significant capital in the market and that depending on where a company is located in the world, Europeans in particular are “strongly willing” to lower prices and ease attachment points based on their location. We are pushing forward.”
“I think over the next eight to 10 weeks we’ll see a more solid structure in the negotiations, but I think customers will continue to ask for either interest rate or attachment point relief. And we’ll see how that goes.” Let’s see. ”
