Pool Re strikes $3 billion retrocession agreement
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Pool Reinsurance Co. Ltd., Britain’s terrorism risk reinsurer, on Friday said it has secured a £2.3 billion ($3.05 billion) retrocession program on a three-year basis, led by Munich Reinsurance Co.
The program is an aggregate excess-of-loss treaty that will attach if Pool Re’s losses exceed £500 million in any year individually or in aggregate, after member insurers’ combined retention of £250 million per event or £410 million in aggregate is met, London-based Pool Re said in a statement.
The retrocession covers property damage arising from nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological attacks; those arising from cyber-triggered terrorist losses; and conventional terrorist acts.
Included in the program is £75 million of coverage from Pool Re’s recent terrorism catastrophe bond, the statement said, adding, “The retrocession wraps around the bond to form a notional layer of £200 million in excess of £500 million.”
The £2.3 billion retrocession is an increase from the £2.1 billion program in 2018, “as Pool Re continues to return U.K. terrorism risk to commercial markets,” the statement said.
The risk was modeled using Pool Re’s own model developed in collaboration with Cranfield University and Guy Carpenter & Co. LLC, which used computational fluid dynamics to assess blast risk, technology that considers how blasts move over, around and between buildings, the statement said.
“As our modeling technology has improved, we have been able to increase appetite for a share of Pool Re’s assumed risk,” Steve Coates, Pool Re’s chief underwriting officer, said in the statement. “We will continue to look for increased retrocession and capital markets capacity to shift even more of that risk to the private sector, provided of course the capacity is of acceptable security and can be written on a long-term basis.”
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