Welcome to Full Capacity, a weekly briefing on all the most important developments of the past week with a personal take on the news from our editor-in-chief, Mithun Varkey, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
IAN Exclusive. We reported exclusively that Howden has hired long-serving Marsh managing director Rebecca Poon as chief client officer for Hong Kong. Poon has been with Marsh for over four decades, having started at JLT. She was most recently head of corporate at Marsh Hong Kong.
New leaders. It was a week of big leadership changes for brokers in Australia. First up, Marsh named Damian Schinck as the new Pacific CEO, stepping into the role previously held by Josh Roach, who has departed the firm.
Gallagher, which has been searching for a CEO after Sarah Lyons was promoted earlier this year, has found their next leader in Marsh’s Alex Lumby.
Meanwhile, Lockton’s new CEO Marcus Pearson, who also joins from Marsh, started in his role this week.
M&A updates. In the world of deals, Asia has been buzzing with activity. Gallagher Re moved to bolster its APAC presence with the acquisition of Australia’s Steadfast Re. This deal will enhance Gallagher’s ability to cater to a variety of clients, including MGAs and mutuals, it said.
In Hong Kong, the Dan Dibden-led broking startup Fraction Brokers is riding the investment wave as Pantheon Specialty Group, backed by BP Marsh, snagged a 25% stake in the digital asset insurance broking venture.
The deal, which saw a complementary investment from the UK-based private equity firm, also gives London-based Pantheon a call option over an additional 35% stake.
Mixed blessings. For Australian carrier IAG, it’s been a bittersweet week. On one hand, the antitrust watchdog has thrown a wrench into their plans for expansion in Western Australia by raising competition concerns over their proposed acquisition of RAC Insurance. On the other hand, they successfully wrapped up the US$546m acquisition of RACQ earlier this week.
Footing the bill. Seadrif Insurance made a US$2 million payout to Laos under the sovereign parametric insurance policy issued in May, which has a first-of-its-kind aggregate trigger. The Southeast Asian country was severely impacted over the past few months by tropical cyclones Wutip and Wipha, along with associated flooding and seasonal monsoon rains.
The Seadrif program is designed to address losses from multiple medium-sized disaster events not just single large disasters, which as executive director, Benedikt Signer, explained to InsuranceAsia News “aligns closely with government disaster response costs, which do not reset after each event”.
The innovation in the parametric space is key to addressing public sector nat cat risks.
Discussing Seadrif’s approach to plugging the protection gap and enhancing insurance adoption in the public sector, Signer said the industry has to “simplify the way the product works, the way the product triggers, the way the product comes across”.
Capital tide lifts cedents’ boats
This weekend, the reinsurance world descends upon stunning Monte Carlo for the annual spectacle of Rendez-Vous de Septembre, marking the unofficial kickoff to the renewals season.
The early whispers from the global reinsurance broking giants are unmistakably clear: gear up for a buyers’ market.
With an influx of traditional and alternative capital, reinsurers are under increasing pressure to adapt.
The winds are blowing favourably for cedents, who stand to benefit from more attractive pricing.
Brokers are suggesting a loosening of the reins – lower retention levels and aggregate covers, which had largely disappeared over the past couple of years, are back on the table. Aon noted that aggregate cover purchases rose by 50% in 2025.
None of this is exactly surprising or new. What does stand out to me from all the presentations and press releases is that cedents now have more options than before.
Gallagher Re highlights a burgeoning array of choices for clients eager to optimise their risk management strategies. Whether it’s fine-tuning attachment points or be it embracing structural innovations like frequency covers and shared limits.
And indeed, there are large pools of highly sophisticated capital eager to embrace insurance risk as an asset class.
This influx grants insurers “immense optionality,” as one report put it, allowing them to rebalance their capital stacks, including adopting the life playbook, like the asset-intensive re deals, to enhance the performance of the underlying assets.
Aon also noted that insurers can now tap into a diverse range of capital sources and reinsurance structures that were unimaginable just a year ago – think facultative reinsurance, structured solutions, cat bonds as well as treaty and proportional reinsurance.
In this environment, growth will not come easy for reinsurers.
They must navigate the challenge of seeking inorganic growth opportunities or find ways to return capital to shareholders.
Yet their return on equity remains robust, a testament to the discipline of the recent hard market.
In fact, Gallagher Re’s Tom Wakefield offers an interesting analysis: it would take a US$115 billion insured loss event on top of everything else this year to drag average industry ROEs down to low double-digits.
Shareholders can certainly sleep easy on that front.
People moves
Aon has promoted Qin Lu to head of North Asia and Andrew Minnitt to head of Southeast Asia.
Howden has appointed Vladimir Ljubisavljevic as the divisional director for its marine, cargo and logistics practice.
Australian MGA Agile has launched construction underwriting with the appointment of Gordon McNab as head of construction.
QBE Insurance Malaysia has appointed Soon Keong Tio as its new CEO.
To keep up with the latest appointments across the region, don’t miss our weekly people move roundup.
