Catastrophe business still isn’t paying enough

Catastrophe reinsurance business may be offering some of the best prices in the whole of the insurance market at the moment, but given the exposure and the risk capital needed to support it, even today’s prices are probably not enough. This is the view of Swiss Re in a new Camares study on the international catastrophe market. It provides a sobering assessment of the cat market’s pricing policy since the study started in 1994 at a time of high rates. Cat reinsurers probably recorded a surplus until 1998 but have been loss making since then, Swiss Re found.