The Reinsurance Podcast

Baden-Baden #38 – David Flandro: What Buyers Should Do Before the Market Turns

The Reinsurance Podcast

Show Notes

Reinsurance prices are falling, but David Flandro argues that rising capital costs should give buyers pause. Howden Re’s Head of Industry Analysis and Strategic Advisory joins Ben Rose in Baden-Baden to explain why cedents need a contingency plan, how new sources of capital are reshaping the market, and what economic margins reveal about the cycle. They also explore AI’s potential to change modelling and risk trading, plus the case for rebalancing retentions, managing accumulations and preserving options ahead of 1/1.

EPISODE LINKS: David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-flandro-074813/ Howden Re: https://www.howdenre.com/

OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introduction 00:38 A different mood at Baden-Baden 01:18 Falling prices and economic margins 02:41 Finding an advantage as capital sources expand 04:47 Three ways AI could change reinsurance 07:28 Who will drive AI disruption? 08:18 Why buyers need a “breaking the glass” strategy 10:42 Retentions, diversification and preserving options 11:51 What makes this cycle different? 13:07 The outlook for 1/1 renewals

CONNECT WITH US: Say Hello: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.supercede.com⁠ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehq Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQ⁠ YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQ⁠ RSS Feed: ⁠https://anchor.fm/s/7e741c8c/podcast/rss⁠

More from The Reinsurance Podcast

Oct 13, 2026

Dame Susan Langley, the first Lady Mayor of the City of London in 800 years and only the third woman to hold the office, has spent a year flying round the world telling people what London’s insurance and reinsurance market actually does. Recorded at Mansion House, this is her case for why the quietest industry in finance needs to find its voice.

Sep 28, 2026

Sub-$50bn of first-half cat losses, no hurricanes last year, none so far this year, and rates heading south. Verisk's Rob Newbold boards the TRP yacht at Monte Carlo RVS to explain why reinsurance should still be braced for $171bn of insured catastrophe loss in an average year. Then he gets into what AI is actually doing to cat modelling, from globally correlated models to agents that talk to each other so humans can get on with deciding.

Sep 25, 2026

New capital is still queuing up for Lloyd's, but Argenta's Kate Tongue and Robert Flach reckon the smart money is taking its time. On board the Supercede yacht at Monte Carlo RVS, they explain three things: why investors tend to show up a year too late, why a diversified Lloyd's portfolio can rival ILS returns with less risk, and why capital cares less about a syndicate's AI than about who's parameterising it.

Sep 25, 2026

Property is softening at a sprint. Casualty is walking, and keeping one eye on US social inflation. On the TRP yacht at Monte Carlo RVS 2026, Lockton Re's Carla Moffett and Sam Sweeney explain why casualty reinsurance won't follow the rest of the market down, and why the brokers worth hiring now do much more than place the treaty.

Sep 25, 2026

Rachel Turk, Chief of Performance and Strategy at Lloyd's, explains why the flood of third-party capital is good news only while there's fresh risk for it to chase, and why institutional money might one day walk for reasons that have nothing to do with the insurance cycle. Plus: data centres that want $20bn of cover but not the bill, and why agentic AI underwriting only works if it explains itself in plain English.

See all episodes →