Full capacity: 2025 renewals – time for reflection 

July 5 2025 by

Welcome to Full Capacity, a weekly briefing on all the most important developments of the past week with a personal take on the news from our editor-in-chief, Mithun Varkey, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

IAN exclusive. We reported exclusively QBE Asia continues to expand its wholesale team in Asia with two senior appointments.

Hong Kong-based financial lines leader Cynthia Huang has been appointed head of Taiwan and Greater China desk (facultative re).

In Singapore, Young Jun Lee has joined as the head of wholesale Asia, construction and engineering. 

M&A deals. It was a busy week for broker M&A in the region. We saw The Ardonagh Group acquire a majority stake in Hong Kong’s Apex Insurance.

Apex is a provider of insurance broking and insurance agency services to SME businesses, predominantly across general liability, A&H, and property damage lines of business.

Meanwhile, Howden continued to ramp up its Japanese operation with the acquisition of a 68.3% stake in Kyoto, Japan-based retail insurance broker Holos Holdings.

In another notable deal, Gallagher Re assumed 100% control of the Japan P&C cedent facultative portfolio from its “undisclosed” JV partner. InsuranceAsia News exclusively reported that the JV partner in question is Miller.

As a result of the acquisition of the JV book, Gallagher Re welcomed new colleagues into London and Singapore from July 1, with further team members to join through to the end of 2025.

Breathing life into legacy. InsuranceAsia News did an in-depth feature on the wave of jumbo block life reinsurance transactions in Asia Pacific.

Market sources say the trend is likely to continue despite growing regulatory scrutiny as carriers seek to optimise their regulatory capital structures and mitigate the risks associated with legacy books of business.

Beyond Japan, transactions have taken place in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea already, said Resolution Life’s Asia CEO Rushabh Ranavat, adding that they “expect to see more there. We also see increased interest in other markets such as Taiwan”.

Wakeup call.  We followed up on the massive Qantas cyber breach that exposed the data of six million customers to hackers.

We reported that while it is unlikely to be a significant loss event for the airline’s insurers, it serves as a wake-up call for insureds and insurers.

The scale of the losses may not reach the level of the Optus data breach incident from 2023, considering the breach happened on a third-party platform and the AIG-led cyber program placed by Marsh is unlikely to be significantly hit.

Tipping the balance

With July 1 renewals concluding, all the big treaty renewals for the year are behind us and the verdict from the big four renewals of 2025 is in: a soft cycle has officially taken hold.

Dean Klisura, president and CEO at Guy Carpenter, noted in the broker’s 1.7 renewals report: “The current trading environment is one of the most favourable for reinsurers in many years, evidenced by the additional capital being attracted to the sector. We see this as a tremendous opportunity to re-balance the market dynamics in our clients’ favour.”

And the balance, it should seem, is tipping in favour of the cedents.

At a recent webinar co-hosted by InsuranceAsia News and Fitch Ratings, industry experts identified the looming specter of a rating reduction spiral as one of the most pressing challenges, standing shoulder to shoulder with geopolitical tensions.

Mark Morley, deputy chairman of Gallagher Re International, posed a critical question: “The question now is whether we have reached, and can maintain, a new and sustainable pricing equilibrium and can avoid the kind of pricing volatility we have seen in the last few years. It is surely to the benefit of both buyers and sellers to see a compression rather than expansion in the pricing cycles!”

Reinsurers still hold that pricing is sustainable. But history is an unforgiving teacher, and the lessons of past cycles are clear: every boom sows the seeds of its own reckoning.

The industry cautions against fixating solely on price and that it needs to be seen in the context of terms and conditions and other factors.

They maintain that they have managed to hold on to the underwriting gains they have imposed in the hard markets.

The critical test? Whether that resolve can withstand the relentless pressure for growth and how long before some break ranks in pursuit of growth?

Aggregate protection and multi-year covers are certainly on their way back already.

In my opinion, though, the elephant in the room remains the question of demand.

Certainly, in APAC, which is arguably the market with the greatest growth potential, demand has been flat by and large.

The 1.7 renewals reflected this reality, with companies like Suncorp trimming their reinsurance tower and locking in multi-year protection to reduce costs.

With the ongoing consolidation in the Australian insurance market, it seems increasingly likely that demand will contract further.

After summer, the industry prepares for the conference season. The stage is set for reflection, debate, and perhaps, the first glimpses of what lies ahead.

People moves

Ben MacCarthy has returned to Marsh as insurer consulting group leader for Asia, based in Singapore, after more than three years at WTW as head of casualty for Asia.

Howden Re has launched a reinsurance broking platform in Hong Kong, headed by Aon’s former reinsurance head in the city Roy Wong.

Markel continue its hiring spree in the region with two appointments this week – Malaysia country head Jasminder Kaur and a senior underwriter for finpro lines in Australia.

To catch up on the most important appointments in the region, make sure to check out our weekly people move roundup. 

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