The Week in 90 Seconds: Facilities, renewals, Howden, AIG

This week, Howden cut a deal to acquire top-five US transactional liability broker Atlantic Global Risk, as its expansion into the US retail space continues. Sister publication Insurance Insider US revealed in early December that the pair were in advanced talks.

This publication revealed that Chaucer and Tokio Marine Kiln have taken over as co-leaders of Atrium’s marine and energy XoL treaty in replacement of Canopius, which relinquished its lead position on the slip in the run-up to the 1 January renewal.

We also revealed that Brown & Brown has engaged with several other reinsurance brokers as it prepares to drop Howden Re as the broker for the Arrowhead earthquake program. This comes after Howden’s 200+ person mass team lift from Brown & Brown just ahead of Christmas.

But the big news this week, of course, was confirmation on Tuesday that AIG has appointed Eric Andersen as president and CEO-elect, with the former Aon president expected to take over from Peter Zaffino from 1 June. The appointment was first reported by this publication earlier that same day.

Here’s a deeper recap of a couple of this week’s highlights, plus your rundown of stories not to miss.

Facilities will have their ‘rubber meets the road’ year in 2026

It’s somewhat counterintuitive major facilities like ACT and Amplify would renew flat after a year in which portfolio underwriting capacity has proliferated, Fiona Robertson writes in this opinion piece.

But what that tells us, she argues, is partly that the market is maturing and partly that the smart-follow market could come under strain, despite the buoyancy it has displayed to date, with Lloyd’s putting cross-class tracker growth up 50% year on year.

As evidence of the segment's maturity, ACT is the best example, as it had already reached 28.5% participation, and most brokers view the 30% threshold as a rough maximum target benchmark for pre-placed capacity.

Move beyond that point and the fear is there will be too little capacity to sustain lead underwriting expertise across a sufficient range of markets, given that follow-market facilities rely on leads for a range of value-add services.

Adding on multiple new providers is unlikely to be a priority for the major broking facilities that have reached scale, but sustaining existing key relationships will be essential.

Other major facilities clearly still have room to go to reach that ceiling, with shares of the placement of up to 10%-20% in general, potentially varying by class of business.

But, within a Lloyd’s context, the leadership has been very clear they are unwilling to let anyone write index facilities, so there is likely to be pent-up interest without an outlet to write.

For the full article, click here.

Is 2026 the year reinsurance FOMO is put to the test?

In this opinion piece, Fiona Robertson asks, if 1 January 2025 was a “good” bad renewal for reinsurers, was 1 January 2026 just a straight negative for them?

Clearly, the headline figures on property-cat outcomes, she writes, were more negative than reinsurers had expected. The softening was a foregone conclusion given excess capital, but the pace of the change was not.

Cuts that might have taken several years to achieve in slower markets have been given up in one renewal. It isn’t just reinsurers that will feel this pain either – it is also reinsurance brokers, which are working hard to create demand. But only time will tell if these efforts bear fruit.

One broker argued that reinsurers “didn’t differentiate on the way up” in imposing blanket rate increases in 2023, and that has influenced the speed of the downturn.

Because there were props that remain to support reinsurance returns, notably stable attachments, and rate pressure that skewed towards remote layers, overall premium income will hold up more than headline rate change, which various brokers put at 12%-15% globally.

And, clearly, the near-universal push for cat market growth reinsurers displayed is a suggestion rates remain adequate.

There is likely to be more differentiation among winners and losers within the reinsurer rankings in the outcome of these softer renewals than in the hard-market years.

The broader spread of signings cited by Guy Carpenter is one proof-point of this, and, as a focus on cross-class reinsurance relationships continues, smaller following markets could lose out relatively more from this trend.

But the key question for all reinsurers is whether the pricing floor established in this renewal will hold for long, or whether it will come under further pressure during upcoming renewals.

For the full article, click here.

Execs on the move

This week was a big one for people-move scoops, with Gallagher Re hiring Aon Reinsurance Solutions’ head of UK and Ireland James Milne.

We revealed that Richard Gurney is set to join Specialist Risk Group as head of specialty following his departure from Marsh, as well as that Gallagher Re global analytics CEO Printhan Sothinathan is to leave the company for a senior role at Willis Re.

Insurance Insider also revealed that Iain MacLeod has resigned from his role as head of marine at MGA Aquilano Insurance and is set to join Talbot as its new head of marine hull and war.

Axa XL CEO for the UK and Lloyd’s Sean McGovern, meanwhile, was selected as chair of the Lloyd’s Market Association, while former HDI Global UK and Ireland CEO Stephanie Ogden is to join Munich Re Syndicate as CEO from 1 March.

And finally...

A selection of other popular stories from this week.

Themes for 2026, Part I: Controlling the descent

Themes for 2026, Part II: Reshaping for a changing market

Global Gruppe sale process pulled amid pricing mismatch

Lloyd’s culture survey finds 70% of firms ‘very good’