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Bermuda Reinsurance Through 2026: Pillar Two, Cat Capacity, and the Florida Pivot
The world's largest reinsurance hub absorbed Helene, Milton, and the January 2025 LA wildfires, raised roughly 18 billion dollars of new Class 4 capital, and on January 1, 2025 began collecting a 15 percent corporate income tax to comply with OECD Pillar Two. The question for 2026 is whether the BMA's Solvency Capital Requirement framework, the Bermuda Triangle capital cycle, and a 50 billion dollar cat bond market can keep clearing US peak peril risk at acceptable margins after the tax wedge.
Bermuda is the central node of global property catastrophe reinsurance. The Bermuda Monetary Authority's 2024 statistical review reports gross premiums written by Bermuda commercial reinsurers above 230 billion dollars, with the island clearing roughly one third of global property and casualty reinsurance capacity and a majority of US pea...
Catastrophe Bonds and ILS in 2026: The Quietly Maturing Climate Capital Market
Outstanding cat bond capital reached USD 47B at end 2024, up from USD 31B in 2022, after a record USD 17.7B issuance year that survived hurricanes Beryl, Helene, and Milton without a single principal impairment.
The catastrophe bond and broader insurance-linked securities (ILS) market entered 2026 as the most credible climate-capital instrument the reinsurance industry has produced. Outstanding 144A cat bond capital reached USD 47B at end 2024 (Artemis Deal Directory), a 52 percent expansion in 24 months from the USD 31B end 2022 mark. Aon Securi...
The US Property Insurance Retreat: FAIR Plans, Reinsurance, and the New Cost of Catastrophe
Hurricane Milton, Helene, and the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires reset the catastrophe baseline. Florida and California carriers retrenched, residual markets ballooned, and reinsurance pricing softened off a cyclical peak while cat bond issuance hit a record. The 2026 question is whether regulatory reform and capital innovation can restore admitted market capacity before the next megacat.
Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm at Siesta Key, Florida on October 9, 2024, generating roughly USD 17 billion in insured losses out of USD 50 billion in total economic damage. Two weeks earlier, on September 26, 2024, Hurricane Helene struck the Big Bend coast as a Category 4, with USD 7 billion of insured loss concent...
The Property Insurance Retreat: Florida, California, and the Climate Repricing of US Real Estate
State Farm and Allstate non-renewing California, Florida's Citizens at 1.4 million policies, reinsurance retrocession costs at multi-decade highs, and the FAIR plan and Citizens together carrying climate risk that private balance sheets have walked away from.
The US property insurance market is running a slow climate repricing. State Farm announced in May 2023 it would stop writing new homeowners policies in California, and Allstate had already done so. State Farm filed a 30 percent rate increase request that the California Department of Insurance approved in part in early 2025. Florida's Citi...