Arab Insurance Group (Arig)

Last year was much less punishing in underwriting terms for Arig, the Middle East’s biggest indigenous reinsurer, than 2007. This is despite continuing soft reinsurance market conditions in the Gulf region and despite two large property losses totalling $11.0mn in the United Arab Emirates in 2008. Arig says that this year is looking much better, despite the slowdown in the regional construction sector. Investment and technical losses by reinsurers means that there is now significantly less alternative capital in the market, particularly for reinsurance programmes with catastrophe exposures which should benefit Arig due to its regional stature and its position as a proportional treaty reinsurer. According to Arig, none of the foreign reinsurers which entered the Gulf region in 2008 has so far developed the momentum to even to begin to threaten its business.

Two thousand and eight was a tough year for the Bahrain based Arab Insurance Group (Arig), the biggest indigenous reinsurer in the Middle East and a company which has dealt with more than a few challenges over the three decades of its existence. Indeed, the group had faced and overcome its biggest challenge towards the turn of the decade when it suffered a number of significant losses mainly in its overseas business portfolios.