Catastrophe Reinsurance Prices Will Keep Falling, Swiss Re Says

Reinsurance prices will continue to fall this year as competition for customers from hedge funds and other sources of alternative capital send premiums to their lowest in four years, according to Swiss Re AG.

“Price reductions have slowed down but there’s still pressure,” Edouard Schmid, the head of the property & specialty unit at the world’s biggest reinsurer, said in an interview in Zurich. "Having many years without large losses and an oversupply of traditional and alternative capital it’s more difficult for us to charge the prices we used to see for this protection.”