RVS 2026: Where Will Reinsurance Growth Come From?

Reflections from Rendez-Vous de Septembre 2026 and the outlook towards 2027

Before going to RVS (the first reinsurance conference leading up to the 1/1/2027 reinsurance renewals), the direction of travel looked relatively clear.

Market reports from brokers and analysts were highlighting the amount of capital entering reinsurance and the downward pressure this was already putting on pricing during 2026. At the same time, reinsurer returns remained strong. That combination suggested a buyers' market: plentiful capital, increasing competition and further pressure on rates as we move towards 2027.

What surprised me in Monte Carlo was not the expectation of softer pricing. It was the level of optimism. Across more than 50 meetings with reinsurers, insurers, MGAs and other market participants, almost everyone we spoke to was talking about growth. Very few were talking about retrenchment.

That left me with one central question: if reinsurance capital is growing faster than demand, where is all that growth going to come from?

1. Growth will come from finding new pools of business

One answer is geographic. Technology is making it increasingly practical for reinsurers and their partners to access markets that have historically been harder to serve efficiently. The Middle East, parts of Asia and Africa remain relatively small insurance pools compared with mature markets, but digitisation creates an opportunity to access, price and service business in those markets in ways that were previously difficult or uneconomic.

The same applies to specialist and niche risks. Better data, digital distribution and more flexible pricing infrastructure make smaller pools of business increasingly viable.

2. The shift towards MGAs could increase the share of premium reaching reinsurers

A second source of growth may not require the overall insurance market to grow at all. It may come from a change in where business sits in the value chain.

MGAs are increasingly targeting specialist niches that larger insurers may find too small, too specialised or too operationally complex to pursue. Some of this is genuinely new business, but some is business moving away from traditional carriers.

That matters to reinsurers because an MGA typically depends much more heavily on third-party capacity than a conventional insurer, which retains a larger proportion of its own risk. As premium shifts from traditional insurers towards MGA structures, a greater proportion of that premium can therefore flow through to reinsurance capacity providers. In other words, reinsurers may be able to grow their addressable market through a change in market structure, even without equivalent growth in the underlying insurance pool.

Technology is an important enabler of this shift. MGAs tend to be entrepreneurial and quick to adopt new technology, data and AI. That allows them to move into narrow markets quickly, while reinsurers can provide the capacity behind them. The combination of specialist distribution at the front and reinsurance capital behind it is becoming an increasingly important model.

3. Excess capital can accelerate modernisation

There is another reason the mood at RVS may have been more positive than the pricing outlook alone would suggest. Reinsurers currently have capital available to invest in themselves.

Even if softer pricing ultimately reduces return on equity, strong balance sheets create an opportunity to modernise. Many of the organisations we met are still operating parts of their underwriting and pricing processes on surprisingly dated infrastructure. Investment in pricing platforms, data, automation and AI can move those businesses forward quickly.

That investment is not simply about efficiency. Better infrastructure should allow reinsurers to access new markets, launch products more quickly, work with more MGAs and analyse opportunities that would previously have been too difficult to service. Today's capital surplus could therefore help build tomorrow's sources of premium growth.

4. Expect more corporate activity

The other strong impression I came away with was the potential for consolidation. With capital available and companies looking for growth, acquisition is an obvious route. I would be surprised if some of the conversations taking place around RVS do not translate into transactions over the coming months.

M&A could become another mechanism through which the industry reshapes itself - combining distribution, specialist underwriting capability, technology and capital in different ways.

What does this mean for 2027 pricing?

My view after RVS is that the pressure on pricing has not disappeared. If anything, the optimism around growth reinforces the underlying issue: there is a lot of capital looking for somewhere to go. If every reinsurer wants to grow at the same time, competition for attractive business is likely to remain intense.

But the more interesting story may be what happens around that pricing pressure. Rather than simply accepting lower returns on the same pool of risks, reinsurers appear to be looking for new geographies, new specialist segments, MGA partnerships, acquisitions and technology-enabled ways of expanding the market available to them.

RVS felt like the beginning of that conversation. Baden-Baden should give us a much clearer indication of how much of the expected pricing reduction is being locked into the 2027 renewals - and how reinsurers intend to respond once it is.