It was after nearly 35 years in reinsurance broking that Jonathan Stephenson (pictured) joined Brit Re as head of office, Bermuda, to help drive its planned expansion as a multi-line reinsurer.
Tasked with supporting the engagement of Brit Re and Brit as the latter looks to engage in growth strategies outside its Lloyd’s platform, Stephenson has a unique perspective on the trends shaping the Bermuda reinsurance market. In conversation with ReInsurance Business, he shared some of these insights, including a snapshot of how the reinsurance market is being shaped by a challenging macro environment.
“At the [2025] Bermuda Risk Summit, much of the geopolitical and economic instability in the world was front and center,” he said. “And I think that the challenge for the reinsurance community is to find opportunity in that somewhat unsettled environment and to shore up the undertakings of our insurance company clients where needed.
“The property market remains buoyant. There’s a lot of capacity available to insurance company buyers from the global market. We haven't seen huge growth in dedicated capital to the reinsurance market over 2024 particularly. But I think what we saw at renewals was a more generous releasing of capacity into the marketplace than we'd seen in the COVID period and in the years immediately post-COVID.”
He noted that while the capital was still there in that period, underwriting capacity was being metered out quite judiciously. However, 1/1 2025 saw the chocks being somewhat taken out from under the wheels of the market as more capacity started to flow back into the marketplace. There are more challenging conditions from a pricing perspective, he said, but, on the plus side, brokers are supporting their underwriting partners in triaging opportunities to align with reinsurers’ appetites and the market is continually reshaping the way it looks at risk.
“So, we're still finding opportunities to deploy capacity in the marketplace with appropriate, expected returns,” he said. “The terms and conditions, other than pricing, seem to be remaining relatively stable, which I think is important for the market as well. While not enjoying it, we can tolerate some variability around pricing. But I think the actual proposition reflected in reinsurance terms and conditions remains appropriately stable for the business.”
Turning his attention to casualty reinsurance trends, Stephenson’s perspective is shaped by the fact that most of Brit Re’s casualty exposure is US-based as it hasn’t yet developed a proposition around international casualty. What is clear, he said, is that the casualty market from the mid-2010s through to 2019 was quite challenged.
This has bifurcated the opportunity available to reinsurers to either support insurance companies who are going through some remediation in their casualty portfolios, or to get engaged with either new business, or those who have gone through that remediation process already, and are looking for new growth opportunities in the market.
Casualty is a business against which one still needs to apply appropriate caution and conservatism, he said. “The last few years, from a reinsurer’s perspective, seem to have created opportunities for premium growth for a number of companies trying to get into the casualty environment. And that has been part of Brit’s ethos for a long time – we have supported reinsurance on the casualty side from London for many years.
“Now, we're just taking some of that underwriting expertise and making sure that it's being delivered from here, as well into a slightly different market. The difference being that we're quite happy to support proportional transactions, here from Bermuda, that we might not be seeing in London. But that takes a certain amount of discipline around pricing models and actuarial evaluation and making sure that we are comfortable with both the past and the trends that those businesses are indicating for the future.
“So, we're bullish enough on the market, I think, to say there are opportunities to continue to support our own growth aspirations, and have casualty be a meaningful part of that.”
Turning his attention to the health of the Bermuda reinsurance market overall, Stephenson said it had been interesting to see the evolution of the market away from a monoline cat proposition to embrace a multi-line offering. It has become a much more diverse product marketplace, he said. It’s now much bigger and more vibrant than it was previously.
In terms of the other considerations facing the market, he said there’s still something of a question mark over what changes in its taxation regime will mean going forward. Talent also remains a trend to keep a close eye on, as it’s a challenge for everyone in the market to ensure it’s attracting and retaining the individuals required to ensure that firms can continue to grow at an appropriate pace and profitability. “And that often means we have to cast a fairly wide net to make the right additions to the reinsurance market,” he said. “And that’s from both Bermuda and from outside of Bermuda.”
