Hannover Re expects retro recoveries for hurricane Helene, September Euro floods: CFO

Speaking this morning, Hannover Re CFO Clemens Jungsthöfel explained that the reinsurance company expects to make recoveries from its retrocession program for recent larger catastrophe events, hurricane Helene and the severe flooding in Europe from September.

When Hannover Re’s quarterly and nine month results were announced first thing this morning, the company had displayed its gross and net losses from these two events as being the same amount, which might suggest nothing would be ceded from them.

But, the Hannover Re CFO explained during the call that this is simply due to the recency of the catastrophes, which makes it challenging to report an accurate expectation of retrocessional recoveries.

In fact, CFO Clemens Jungsthöfel explained that Hannover Re has benefited from retro protection across a number of catastrophe loss events in the year so far.

“We have recorded a high frequency of losses from natural catastrophes, including a series of weather related events in Canada, floods in Europe, and hurricanes Beryl and Helene,” Jungsthöfel said.

“Most of these events are at least partially covered by our reach retrocession program,” he continued.

Moving on to say that, “With regards to the floods in Europe, and in particular hurricane Helene, we expect to get some relief from our retrocession.

“But as both events happened around the time of closing the books, our estimates are based on a top down analysis.

“Hence, we decided to book the numbers at gross for net at the end of the third-quarter. The actual gross loss might come in higher when we book the numbers on a treaty level, with the corresponding retro relief. However, the net numbers do reflect our current estimate.”