Renewal dates
Concentration of reinsurance renewals on a few dates in the year, mainly January 1, April 1 and July 1, giving the market a calendar rather than a continuous flow.
Hurricane Ian hit Florida at the end of September 2022. Three months later the January 1, 2023 renewal was negotiated with that loss still on the table, and European catastrophe treaties renewed at higher rates even though they had no Florida exposure. Ian was one factor among several, and it shows why timing matters. Reinsurance runs on a handful of renewal dates. January 1 is the heaviest, carrying most European non-life, most global programs and a large share of emerging markets. April 1 follows the Japanese fiscal year. June 1 is Florida, which renews on the day the hurricane season opens, before anything is known about it. July 1 takes part of the US book plus Australia and New Zealand. January 1 sets the tone for the year, and brokers measure April and July against it in their renewal reports. Capacity gets allocated on those dates, and a reinsurer that has not deployed its capacity at January 1 finds it harder to put to work afterward. A large event just before a renewal goes into pricing at once. The same event two weeks later often waits for the next renewal of the affected book.
The North Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. The Florida renewal on June 1 is therefore negotiated before anything is known about the season, the January 1 renewal after it. That lag explains why a heavy hurricane year feeds through into European January 1 rates, even though the peril has nothing to do with the exposure covered. That is what happened after Hurricane Ian in September 2022.
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