Munich Re's Jurecka: Reinsurance still attractive with rates down less than 1% so far in 2025

By Rebecca Delaney

May 13 - (The Insurer) - Munich Re CFO Christoph Jurecka said on Tuesday that risk-adjusted rate reductions had averaged less than 1% at this year's renewals to date.

The reinsurer achieved 6.1% growth in its April 1 portfolio, which expanded its premium base to 2.8 billion euros ($3.1 billion) amid growth in casualty proportional business in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

“Coming off a particularly high level, the risk- and inflation-adjusted prices declined by 2.5%, but what is important is that, from our point of view, the overall market environment remains attractive and allows us to earn good margins on the risks we take,” Jurecka said on a media call after Munich Re's first-quarter results announcement.

However, Jurecka noted that the focus on Asian markets at the April 1 renewals means that sometimes individual client relationships can have an impact on aggregated numbers.

“1.4 is, in a way, a very specific renewal, given that it's very much centred around Asia or Japan,” he said.

“Therefore, it will be interesting to see rate development going forward in the 1.6 and 1.7 renewals, in particular when we're talking about geographies much closer to LA where the LA wildfires might have also significantly bigger impact than (in) Asian markets.”

Jurecka continued: “If I look at our two renewals we had this year so far together, then the price change is less than 1%, which we interpret as overall still being in a stable environment where rates continue to be very attractive, and portfolio quality generally continues to be very high.”

He added that rate change in the specialty segment is difficult to communicate at renewals owing to the differentiated classes of business.

Munich Re’s newly created global specialty segment reported a net result of 8.0 million euros and a combined ratio of 95.5% for the first quarter of 2025. The segment recorded 200 million euros of net claims expenditure related to the LA wildfires.

Jurecka said Munich Re is maintaining its full-year profit guidance of 6.0 billion euros.

“We are very confident to achieve that, given the fact that our Q1 net earnings are within a range of a normal fluctuation in a single quarter,” he said.

“While in this quarter we had to deal with major losses and the negative currency impact, we expect an earnings benefit, for example, of the closing of the next acquisition, presumably in Q3. Therefore our outlook is unchanged for all the KPIs in our outlook, and we continue to be confident to achieve the 6.0 billion euros at year-end.”