Life and non-life reinsurance market in 2020

Non-life reinsurance market

In terms of non-life gross written premiums, Munich Re has unseated Swiss Re from the top ranking. The German leader Swiss Re, Hannover Re, Lloyd's, Berkshire Hathaway and Scor are trailing behind. GIC Re, meanwhile, moved down from 7^th position in 2019 to the 10^th standing in 2020. Everest Re moved up from 8^th to 7^th in 2020 according to the latest ranking.

In terms of non-life premium growth, Hannover Re and China Re achieved the highest growth rates with 24.24% and 23.07% respectively. On the other hand, Swiss Re and GIC Re have reported a significant drop in their premium income of 17.5% for the former and 6.3% for the latter.

Combined ratio

According to AM Best, Covid-19 has heavily strained reinsurers’ combined ratios. For the four first players of the market, this rate has deteriorated by 5 to 15 points in one year. GIC Re has the highest combined ratio of the top 10 with 113.1%.

Only one reinsurer among the top ten, Korean Re, has a combined ratio below 100%.

For the rest of the ranking, the situation does not look any better, with 37 reinsurers among the 40 remaining posting combined ratios above 100%. Burdened by a rate of 140.5% and affected by its deteriorating loss ratio (106.3%), Qatar Re came out with the highest combined ratio.

The average combined ratio of all top 50 reinsurers was set at 104.9% in 2020, compared to 102.4% a year earlier while the average loss ratio of the top 50 reinsurers was reported at 76.2% in 2020.

Life reinsurance market

In terms of life business, Swiss Re has also given up its first position to its German competitor. With 15.6 billion USD of gross premiums, Munich Re is reporting a 19% increase in its life business and is gaining two places in 2020. In fact, it is Generali which is recording the strongest premium growth in 2020 (74.44%) while Swiss Re is down by 6.61%.