Bermuda-domiciled insurer Hiscox experienced average reductions of 5% to 7% in reinsurance rates during the January renewals, the company stated this morning, noting that there was local variation depending on loss experience and that the decline had been from "historically high rating levels" in 2009. Hiscox added that current rates continued to offer "attractive margins". Reinsurance makes up about a third of Hiscox's gross written premiums. Since Hiscox's previous update in November 2009 the market had continued to be benign for catastrophe losses, with no significant events in the US, while Hiscox Europe's claims experience continued to improve after Winter Storm Klaus caused a poor start. Hiscox UK has suffered slightly because of the recent severe weather. On the investment side, the return for 2009 was approximately 7.2%, increasing the value of the portfolio by the end of the year to £2.6bn ($4.196bn). Hiscox will pay a second interim dividend on March 29 2010 rather than a final dividend later in the year. This will enable it to beat the planned rise in the top rate of income tax in the UK on April 5, from 40% to 50% for those earning more than £150,000 a year.

If offshore energy underwriters fail to change their catastrophe-exposed products, the sector will see an increasing move towards self-insurance, warned ACE's head of Global Energy, Roger Giddings, at an Insurance Institute of London lecture yesterday. A number of serious impacts in recent years on offshore rigs, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, led many insurers to hike prices significantly while others left the market. This in turn led to operators either choosing or being forced to find alternative ways to limit their catastrophe exposure. Mr Giddings said that it might not be easy to get operators back into the world of traditional insurance once the market softened and prices started to retreat. He said that, once a company had started to self-insure, it might not be keen on returning to a market where premiums shot up as soon as a catastrophe struck. "Our view is that, once a risk manager doesn't get a big bill for insurance, he won't court another one".

Six months after Allianz rebranded its French AGF subsidiary as Allianz France, the European insurer has claimed that its spontaneous brand awareness level has grown from 1% to 11%. Although Allianz claimed this as a success, the company still has some way to go to reach the 21% spontaneous brand awareness achieved by AGF. Speaking at a press conference, Allianz France's head of marketing and communication Dominique Monera said that Allianz France hoped that the new name would overtake the old name by the end of 2011. Mr Monera said that 96% of existing customers knew of the name change, while 50% of the market overall was aware of it by the end of last year, compared with just 25% four months earlier. However, Allianz is taking a more gradual approach in the distribution network, with 1,700 of its 2,700 tied agents still calling themselves AGF agents.

Swiss Re, a strong supporter of alternative risk transfers such as cat bonds, has predicted a rise of "at least 43%" in catastrophe bond sales in 2010, reports Bloomberg. Martin Bisping, head of non-life risk transformation at the reinsurer, said in an interview that "the pipeline for new cat bonds is very active and the momentum of 2009 will surely continue". About $5bn in notes will expire this year, and both Swiss Re and Munich re have said that they expect this business at least to be rolled over into new special purpose vehicles. Mr Bisping said that the reinsurer was "optimistic about the growth prospects of cat bonds", but that it remained to be seen whether the market would exceed $5bn in2010. Cat bond sales reached their peak in 2007, when they touched $7bn. The market was severely dented by the collapse of Lehman Bros, which indicated that counterparty credit risk was a factor that needed to be considered when investing in such bonds. Mr Bisping said that cat bonds currently represented about 7% of total non-life reinsurance capacity.