View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2017/10/16/467573.htm
Catastrophe losses from the recent U.S. hurricanes and Mexican earthquakes will lead to price rises on London market insurers’ loss-affected lines and could also affect wider market pricing trends, according to Fitch Ratings in a new report.
The total industry insured losses from the three major hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria, could be in the range of US$75 billion to US$120 billion, said Fitch, quoting estimates from the Newark, Calif.-based catastrophe modeling firm RMS.
“We expect 2017 earnings of London market insurers to be significantly reduced from 2016 due to catastrophe losses and the combined ratio for the Lloyd’s market to be significantly above 100 percent,” Fitch said in its report titled “London Market Insurance – Autumn Dashboard.” [Editor’s note: The Fitch London market dashboard can be downloaded from ratings agency’s website via the dashboard link].
The ratings agency noted, however, that considerable uncertainty remains around the size of the losses, although some insurers, such as Lloyd’s of London and Beazley, have already announced their preliminary estimates.
Lloyd’s estimated net claims from Harvey and Irma to be around US$4.5 billion, while Beazley said the impact of the three hurricanes on 2017 earnings would be around US$150 million, equivalent to around half of 2016 earnings, Fitch continued.
Discussing the trends seen in London market insurers’ first half results, the Fitch report said, companies benefited from “an exceptionally low level of catastrophe losses, which masked some loss ratio deterioration, due to pricing pressures for some insurers.”
For example, Fitch said that major catastrophe losses contributed only 1.9 percent to Lloyd’s of London’s reported combined ratio in 1H17, significantly below the 10-year average of 8.7 percent.
Another trend in the first half were generally lower reserve releases from those seen in the same period in 2016, although this wasn’t seen across the market.
“Reserve development was affected by reserve strengthening in motor re/insurance lines, driven by the change in the Ogden discount rate in February 2017 and reserve strengthening in property lines, which offset positive reserve development in other classes,” said Fitch.
It noted that reserve releases reduced Lloyd’s of London’s combined ratio by 1.6 percent in 1H17, compared to 5.7 percent in the first half of 2016.
Some companies reported stronger reserve releases, including:
While premium rates continued their downward trajectory in 1H17, they dropped at a slower rate than in 1H16, the Fitch dashboard said.
For example, Fitch said Novae reported an overall rate reduction of 1.8 percent (1H16: 3.9 percent) during the first half, Beazley had a 2.0 percent decline (1H16: 2.0 percent) and Brit had a 2.2 percent drop (H16: 3.7 percent).
“The biggest rate declines were experienced by large property, energy and terrorism lines, with Beazley reporting an overall rate reduction on renewal business of 9 percent for energy and 11 percent for terrorism,” Fitch said. “Pricing pressures remained, due to strong competition and overcapacity in the market, leading insurers to shrink their exposures, or exit lines of business where margins are no longer adequate.”
Source: Fitch