... through its Navigators Management underwriting agency unit, has expanded its professional liability operation by partnering with global broker Aon’s Aon Affinity unit to offer professional liability cover to US p/c insurance agencies with up to $10m in annual commissions.

... has opened its European reinsurance representative office in Hamburg, Germany to represent Validus Re. The new office, headed by Maureen MacDonald, will focus on property, marine and other short-tail specialty classes. Ms MacDonald joins from Aon Re Germany.

Munich Re is expected to report a second-quarter gain of some €1.08bn ($1.53bn), while Swiss Re will post a gain of around CHF860m ($805m), according to Keefe, Bruyette & Woods senior analyst William Hawkins. He predicted that pricing momentum at Munich Re would disappoint, with the combined ratio for the quarter worsening 2.7 points to 98.3%, compared with the same quarter last year. KBW estimated Swiss Re’s Q2 combined ration to be 96.0%, five percentage points higher than in the same period last year. Munich Re reports on August 4, while Swiss Re is scheduled to post its Q2 figures on August 5. Mr Hawkins was bullish about Munich Re, noting that “strategically, the group is well-positioned in its core market”. He said that Swiss Re’s continued low share price relative to its peers “reflects the uncertainty of its credit risks as well as the ultimate potential dilution to value resulting from the Berkshire Hathaway convertible”.

The energy practice at global broker Marsh expects the softening trends in the global energy market to continue for most classes, with the pace of softening accelerating in the third and fourth quarters. In Marsh’s latest Energy Markets Monitor, the broker observed that “underwriters are behind on income budgets and will need to make up the shortfall with the balance of the year and potential opportunities coming to a close quickly”. Marsh said that the major driver in Q2 had been the US Gulf of Mexico wind risk accounts, where insurers had in the main “experienced a very difficult market place”. Marsh said that, going forward, “clearly the product offering will need to be modified to bring the buyers back or underwriters will have to accept that their book will be much smaller going forward”. The broker was confident that “some solution is bound to appear”. Marsh also observed that the extent of hurricane events in 2009 are likely to dictate the direction of the market in 2010. “The absence of large hurricane claims may prove to those that are self-insured (in 2009) that they made the right decision and may also free up some reinsurance capacity and entice underwriters to change their product offering”, the broker said. Marsh observed that the market place itself was “relatively stable”, and that the financial crisis at AIG (now AIU Holdings) had caused little real dislocation in the Energy sector.