Swiss Re’s Higginbotham ‘optimistic’ on market outlook

Speaking to Re-Insurance in Baden-Baden this year, Swiss Re’s Russell Higginbotham – who was appointed CEO of reinsurance for EMEA at the reinsurance giant in September – highlighted some of the challenges the market faces and where the opportunities lie.

Higginbotham said he was “optimistic” on the outlook of the global reinsurance market.

“I feel reasonably optimistic even though it’s a difficult environment,” he said.

“The mood in the market is good and people are talking about growth - which is a good thing,” Higginbotham added.

Higginbotham said that since the major catastrophes of last year – including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, as well as the California wildfires – the market had witnessed some pockets of rate hardening.

“We’ve seen some reasonable price increases over the course of 2018,” he said.

But he said that while the uptick witnessed was positive for reinsurers it was not sufficient.

“They’re not to a level anyone would want them to be at – but we have made progress,” he added.

“The challenge is that the market is in a difficult place,” Higginbotham said.

He pointed to the opportunities that technology can offer the industry, viewing data as being a tool which reinsurers can use to overcome some of the current obstacles in the market.

“I think of technology as facilitating access to data,” Higginbotham said.

“I think we’ll see new forms of it coming into our world – we have already,” he added.

Higginbotham said that tools that are capable of optimising data could potentially transform the way the reinsurance industry interacts with clients.

“It’ll give reinsurers the opportunity to think much more broadly over their proposition,” he said.

“Not just as a price transaction but to be more of a service based transaction.”