There will be pockets of softness and hardness in the non-cat space: Conduit Re CEO

Neil Eckert, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bermuda-based reinsurer Conduit Re, said this morning at the company’s briefing in Monte Carlo at RVS 2025, that there will be areas of softness and hardness in the non-catastrophe space heading into 2026.

While property cat often dominates headlines in the reinsurance market, it’s an interesting time in the non-cat space, with different dynamics across property, specialty, and casualty.

“What you’ve really got is about 30 sub-classes sitting within those sectors, and sub-classes get split geographically, and they get split in accordance with type of risk,” said Eckert.

Parts of the non-cat market have been impacted by big claims in the last few years, including losses like the Baltimore Bridge collapse, while there’s been a fair amount of loss activity in the aviation space as well.

“So, there’ll be pockets of the market where losses have been sustained. And the question mark then is, against the backdrop of the softening market, how will markets respond? And will people be able to technically reprice business on the basis of claims experience, or is there just a lot of capital?” continued Eckert.

Ultimately, the CEO expects there to be discipline in some parts of the market, and “possibly even opportunity” in areas as well.

“There are still some parts of casualty where brokers are struggling to place big programmes,” added Eckert. “So, there’ll be pockets of softness and hardness.”

During the briefing, Eckert also offered his thoughts on the retrocession market, noting that there will be risk appetite as the catastrophe bond market has had three fantastic years.

“So, one would expect there will be availability on retro. We are planning and getting ready to go to market, but there’ll be certainly no shrinkage, and I think that there will be capacity available and risk appetite,” he said.