The Reinsurance Podcast

Monte Carlo #54 - Joachim Racz: The Reinsurance Cycle Is Overcorrecting

The Reinsurance Podcast

Show Notes

Everyone arrived in Monaco certain the market was going one way. Joachim Racz, CEO at Ageas Re, spent the week telling brokers that the ask went 20%, then 15%, then 10% in about ten days, and there's a reason it stops somewhere. He calls the last four years hazard-driven over-oscillation — reinsurance repricing down as fast as it repriced up, with IFRS 17 now sitting underneath the whole thing like a floor nobody wants to be first to test.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: Why pricing to a 10% ROE in 2026 is a worse trade than the identical number in 2021, and what 350 basis points of risk-free rate does to the shareholder maths How onerous contract reporting under IFRS 17 changes soft-market behaviour, and why 2027 is the first cycle where the loss shows up on day one rather than 31 December What four consecutive loss-light years do to everyone's view of what they were actually pricing for Where the model gaps are already showing — Portuguese windstorm, European wildfire — and what that means for perils nobody rated as lead Why AI investment across re/insurance is real but slow, and how a nine-month internal approval swallows a one-week build A specific thing to watch for yourself this week: whether the tone on Wednesday evening matches the tone on Sunday

OUTLINE & TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro00:37 A strange market, and brokers testing 20%, then 15%, then 10%01:53 Why 2021 pricing doesn't mean 2021 economics03:02 IFRS 17, onerous contracts, and the floor nobody wants to test04:56 Hazard-driven over-oscillation, and the cost of wild swings07:07 What you can and can't blame on climate change08:34 Secondary perils and the Portuguese windstorm nobody modelled09:43 5% of staff budget on AI, and nine months waiting on IT10:59 Disruptors, cybersecurity, and five points off the combined ratio12:53 Sunday's tone versus Wednesday's: what to watch this week

EPISODE LINKS: Joachim's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joachim-racz-a11401/ Ageas Re: https://www.ageas-re.com/

CONNECT WITH US:Say Hello: [email protected]: https://www.supercede.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supercedehqX: https://twitter.com/SupercedeHQYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SupercedeHQRSS 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 →