RENAISSANCERE HOLDINGS LTD
For the period ended Sep 30, 2025. Filed Oct 29, 2025.
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A company's report for each of its first three quarters. The financial statements are not audited. It shows how the business has moved since the last annual report, and what management says changed.
Sep 30, 2025 · Filed Oct 29, 2025
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CURRENT OUTLOOK
Over the last 10 years, we have made key strategic decisions to build the capabilities and scale to allow us to generate superior returns in an evolving marketplace. We have diversified our sources of capital through various owned and managed balance sheets as well as equity, debt and insurance-linked securities markets. We are unique among our peers in that we have both owned and managed, and rated and fronted, vehicles across the risks that we write. Our three drivers of profit put us in a differentiated position to absorb losses while still providing efficient capacity to our customers and producing strong returns for our shareholders. This has afforded us significant flexibility to react when the world changes.
We believe that we are in a strong capital position, which provides us with the flexibility and opportunity to deploy capital into the business while actively repurchasing shares when at attractive valuations. When possible, our preference is to deploy any excess capital into profitable business opportunities before returning excess capital to shareholders. Over the past several quarters, we have returned significant capital to our shareholders through share repurchases at what we believe to be attractive valuations.
Reinsurance Market Trends and Developments
We believe we have created significant opportunities to source attractive risk in the lines of business that we write, and that such opportunities will result in superior returns for our shareholders. We are in a period of heightened macroeconomic volatility, and we believe that it is in times of uncertainty when RenaissanceRe’s expertise, partnership-approach and coordination across teams differentiates us as a reinsurance leader.
We are uniquely positioned to write a variety of risks, leveraging our enhanced risk and capital management technology and underwriting expertise to cover multiple lines of business. In particular, we have invested heavily to understand the influence of climate change on the weather and its impact on the risks that we take. We believe that our RenaissanceRe Risk Sciences team gives us an advantage in properly reflecting the evolving phenomenon of climate change in our models compared to commercially available models.
Since the step change in reinsurance pricing in 2023, we believe that the market has appropriately balanced risk between insurers and reinsurers. That said, in the current market, not all risks are equally attractive, and returns can vary significantly between classes of business and deals within each class. This provides attractive opportunities for underwriters with strong access to risk. Our success throughout 2025 has been predicated on our application of our deep underwriting expertise to differentiate the best deals, and our strong customer value proposition to maintain our position as a consistent incumbent. This led to a highly successful mid-year renewal. Looking ahead to the January 1 renewals and planning for 2026, we intend to follow a similar disciplined playbook focused on engaging early with customers on their risk challenges, leveraging our underwriting excellence to identify the best opportunities, and deploying our owned and third-party balance sheets to construct an attractive portfolio.
General Economic Conditions
We think that the stresses in the global economy will continue and that this may result in increased market volatility. Global events and geopolitical instability have contributed to widespread economic inflation over the past few years compared to recent historical norms. We consider the anticipated effects of inflation, including social, economic, and event-driven effects, in our loss models, on our investment portfolio, and generally in the running of our business, and actively monitor trends in these areas. To the extent that tariffs or inflation exacerbate demand surge, we believe we have the tools to appropriately price for that scenario.
Central bank policy and changes to interest rates may also increase the risk of inflationary pressure. The effects of interest rate trends on our reinsurance and insurance business could be magnified for longer-tail business lines that are more inflation-sensitive, particularly in our Casualty and Specialty segment.
The risk of a global recession is a continuing concern. However, we think that our business model is well positioned to be less sensitive to an inflationary or recessionary environment. Several factors are driving recent volatility, including concerns regarding tariffs, trade, inflation and recession. As a reinsurer, we are paid to assume volatility, and are intentionally designed to withstand it. The largest risks that we protect against, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, do not correlate to financial cycles and need to be protected against in good or bad economic times. Due to these factors, we believe that our Company is generally “anti-correlated” to the current macroeconomic environment. Notwithstanding the many uncertainties and challenges that lie ahead, we believe that our track record of responding to industry events, differentiated risk management and client service capabilities, coupled with access to diverse sources of both capital and risk continue to position us favorably in the current environment.
Tax Updates
The Bermuda CIT became effective on January 1, 2025. Therefore, our profits generated on or after January 1, 2025 in Bermuda (except for profits earned by our joint ventures and managed funds) are subject to a 15% corporate income tax. Furthermore, we generally expect that the profits generated in Bermuda on or after January 1, 2025 by our joint ventures and managed funds, except to the extent those profits are attributable to redeemable noncontrolling interests, will also be taxed at 15% as a result of the enactment or expected enactment of provisions similar to the GloBE Rules by many of the jurisdictions in which we operate. These changes have impacted our results, and are expected to impact our results in the future. We believe that the flexible global operating model that we have utilized will continue to prove resilient.
Three Drivers of Profit
In the third quarter of 2025, we delivered another strong quarter in which all three drivers of profit performed well to contribute meaningfully to our results. Having three distinct sources of income makes us more resilient to catastrophe activity, and we believe this resilience will reward our shareholders with superior returns over the long term. The benefit of this approach is evident in our results this year, as we were able to absorb one of the largest catastrophe losses in history with the California Wildfires in the first quarter. As we have developed increased income diversification over time, it has reduced the impact of large loss activity on our results. Losses that used to impact annual results to a significant extent now only impact quarterly results to a more limited extent due to our increased scale and diversified and sustainable earnings streams.
Underwriting Income
Through disciplined underwriting, we aim to manage the cycle and allocate our capital to the business that will generate the best returns. Portfolio construction is a continuous process, and we believe that we have constructed a large and profitable underwriting portfolio that has been bolstered by our ability to participate broadly across our clients’ portfolios. We aim to be a provider of first choice and a trusted partner to our customers to help them manage their risk across portfolios and market cycles.
Each of our reportable segments has a different risk and volatility profile, which we believe contributes in distinct and important ways to our three drivers of profit, and in particular our underwriting income. The Property segment is inherently more volatile, but also provides meaningful underwriting income in lower catastrophe quarters as well as strong fee income from third-party capital. The Casualty and Specialty segment generally provides a more stable underwriting result over-time, along with significant investment income stemming from capital invested on longer tail risk in certain lines of business. These segments also provide us with diversification across our loss reserves and the tail of our risks, which allows us to better manage changes in loss trends, whether favorable or adverse, across our underwriting portfolio.
We have created a large, well-diversified combined portfolio with deep partnerships with brokers and clients. We continue to remain focused on staying nimble to enable us to capture attractive opportunities as they arise, while exercising discipline to effectively manage our portfolio.
We believe that the underwriting market remains attractive and that we outperformed at the mid-year renewal where we successfully achieved our objectives, including growing in property catastrophe exposure, while continuing to optimize our Casualty and Specialty segment portfolio. Our strong results in the quarter are connected to our underwriting strategy and the advantages that it brings, including our integrated operating model, deep risk expertise, and customer-centric approach. We believe that our unique position in the market, and the associated preferential access and deep client trust allowed us to build a portfolio that positions us for continued strong performance.
For 2026, our focus is on continuing to grow business where it makes sense. We believe that we are well positioned to access and underwrite attractive opportunities due to our flexible underwriting platform, risk expertise, and the strength and durability of our partnerships with clients and brokers. Within both segments, we continued to shape the portfolio and focus on preserving our underwriting margin. In 2026, we intend to continue to prioritize margin over growth. We prefer top-line growth when it makes sense, but reinsurance is a risk business where its more important to know when and where to grow the business to be able to deliver results for our shareholders over the long term.
Property
With the global impact of climate change, we expect the frequency and severity of perils such as drought, flood, rain, hail and wildfire to continue at the elevated levels we have seen in recent years. We believe that the increase in severe weather, coupled with currently projected demographic trends in catastrophe-exposed regions, contributes to factors that will increase the average economic value of expected losses, increase the number of people exposed per year to natural disasters and, in general, exacerbate disaster risk. The impact from these factors was apparent in the California Wildfires. However, we think that the underwriting changes that we have made, including requiring higher rates and attachment points, has optimized the portfolio and positioned us so that this catastrophe activity will have a smaller impact on our financial results than it otherwise may have.
We have grown into an attractive property catastrophe market where we believe that we deployed leading capacity at rates and terms that outperformed the broader market. Our strong capital position provides us with the flexibility to move quickly to offer capacity to our partners at attractive rates - this allowed us to capture an outsized market share of new demand this year. At the same time, we supported our customers in one of the largest industry losses in history, the California Wildfires. We have seen strong rate levels in the property catastrophe market, but expect some rate pressure at the January 1 renewals. In 2026, we still expect strong rates with stable terms and conditions and retentions that should produce attractive return levels.
Our gross to net strategy is another differentiator which we believe will support sustained attractive returns. We generally retain approximately half of our assumed property catastrophe premiums while sharing a portion with our third-party capital partner balance sheets, and earning fee income in exchange. Fee income is less sensitive to rate movements, and reduces the overall volatility of our returns.
Through 2025, we continued our disciplined approach to renewals in the other property book of business and expect that momentum to carry into 2026. This book includes a combination of catastrophe and non-catastrophe exposed business, and we adjust its composition and size based on market opportunities. While we are seeing increased competition in this area, we intend to manage our exposure based on expected profitability and opportunities in the market.
Casualty and Specialty
Part of fulfilling our vision of being the best underwriter is knowing when to grow our portfolio and when to exercise discipline. Each line of business in the Casualty and Specialty segment is at a different point in the cycle and we continually manage our participation to achieve the best portfolio mix and balance of risk and reward. Our prior work building strong relationships with key customers has allowed us to gain superior access to desirable business. We have focused our growth in attractive areas while reducing on deals that do not meet our return hurdles. We continue to grow organically in the credit line of business where we are seeing the most attractive risk-adjusted returns.
We have continued to shape our casualty portfolio, reducing our exposure in select lines this year, such as in general casualty and professional liability. We did this in a way that was sensitive to the needs of our customers, while maintaining strategic flexibility. Our portfolio management and robust reserving process has provided us with overall stability in the Casualty and Specialty segment, allowing the segment to remain a substantial contributor to our financial results. This diversification has also been beneficial when certain classes of business or underwriting years have experienced increasing loss trends and required more reserves. We believe that we have a prudent reserving process for our Casualty and Specialty segment and remain confident in our reserves.
Across our Casualty and Specialty segment, we have experienced, and expect to continue to experience, movements up or down across different lines of business over time. This is the nature of the business and part of managing a diversified underwriting book. We have been closely monitoring casualty loss trends, and our longstanding approach is to recognize increasing trends early. We are reflecting our insights in our reserving process to proactively stay ahead of trend and inform portfolio shaping decisions. In our casualty class specifically, we have been closely monitoring trends in general liability where inflation and claims severity have been increasing. While rates in general liability have increased and we believe this remains ahead of trend, we intend to continue to take a conservative approach and have reduced our general liability exposure over the last year. We typically manage our casualty business over a 10-year cycle and continue to manage our exposure given the loss trend in this business. During the last year we have worked closely with our clients with a partnership lens, and have observed meaningful progress in their efforts to address social inflation trends, aiding us in structuring our lines to create the optimal portfolio for the next cycle.
Looking ahead to the January 1 renewals, which are significant for the Casualty and Specialty segment, we are confident that our risk expertise and customer relationships will allow us to select the best risks and construct an attractive portfolio, even with increased competition expected in certain lines. We intend to remain closely connected with our clients to understand trends and how they are managing claims. The Casualty and Specialty segment is strategically important to our vision of being the best underwriter as it allows us to trade with clients across classes and access the most attractive lines across property, casualty and specialty while also generating substantial float in an attractive interest rate environment.
We take a differentiated approach to our Capital Partners unit, with a focus on first sourcing the risks that we intend to write, and then matching them with the appropriate third-party capital. This business improves our offerings to customers, enhances our ability to optimize our portfolios, and generates attractive fees for doing so. Over the past several years, this has been a growing, strong and consistent contributor to our financial results.
We earn fee income in exchange for sharing risk with our third-party capital partners, and while we share underwriting income during profitable periods, we also share underwriting losses. We view fee income as a growing and sustainable driver of profit that we expect will continue to generate low-volatility management fee income. However, fees may be impacted by large losses, such as those experienced during the first quarter, which can potentially result in reduced management fees, no performance fees or the reversal of previously accrued performance fees. The fee income that we earn is recorded in multiple line items in our financial statements, refer to “Part II, Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” for additional information on its impact, including for the proportion that is not included in underwriting income (loss).
Investment Income
We structure our investment portfolio to emphasize the preservation of capital and the availability of liquidity to meet our claims obligations, to be well diversified across market sectors, and to generate relatively attractive returns on a risk-adjusted basis over time. Our investment portfolio is intended to complement our underwriting portfolio, and as we have grown and diversified our underwriting business, we have also grown our investment portfolio and have greater flexibility around duration and asset mix to further shape our portfolio. Generally, we view investment income as being relatively less volatile and a diversifying source of income, and as we have increased the contribution of investment income through the increase in the size of our investment portfolio and an evolution in asset mix, it helps to reduce the overall volatility of our earnings.
See the “Risk Factors” section in our Form 10-K for additional information on factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements contained in this Form 10-K and other documents we file with the SEC.
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