On 17 January, Paris-based reinsurer CCR Re officially announced a name change to Arundo Re. Asia Insurance Review sat with Arundo Re’s Mr Laurent Montador for an exclusive interview on growth opportunities, regional expansion plans and the potential of reinsurance sidecars in Asia.
Charting Arundo Re’s growth path
Over the past several years, Arundo Re has experienced strong growth – between 15 and 20% annually – in terms of premium development across various markets.
Arundo Re deputy CEO Laurent Montador opened the interview by reflecting on the company’s growth trajectory and key milestones to date.
“Our focus has always been on ensuring this growth remains profitable and aligned with our capital structure. In 2023, we welcomed new shareholders and secured a capital increase of EUR200m ($227.90m), which has enabled us to continue our profitable expansion across all lines of business and nearly every geography,” Mr Montador said.
He noted that as of 2024, Arundo Re’s turnover surpassed EUR1.3bn; a significant leap from their beginnings in 2017, when they started just above EUR350m.
“We’re particularly active in the Asian market, which now accounts for more than 20% of our overall portfolio across both life and non-life segments,” he said.
“On the P&C side, property reinsurance is our largest segment, making up around 50% of total P&C premiums. Naturally, catastrophe reinsurance is a key component of our property exposure.”
He said Arundo Re aims to maintain balance, working closely with clients and ensuring no single risk overexposes the portfolio. Managing with retrocession during the cycle is also important.
“This helps us avoid overdependence on any one treaty and supports a well-diversified portfolio,” he added.
Harnessing innovation at Arundo Re
Arundo Re approaches innovation by actively integrating the latest technological advancements, particularly in data analytics and process efficiency.
This includes leveraging tools such as big data analysis, natural language processing, and large language models, which have significantly expanded their capabilities.
After going through a proof-of-concept phase, Mr Montador explained that the team has implemented solutions that help read and process financial accounts more efficiently; extracting figures and currencies and mapping them to the correct database fields.
“While the process isn’t fully automated, we maintain a human-in-the-loop approach. It substantially assists staff by accelerating data entry and improving accuracy,” he said.
He also mentioned the use of similar tools for textual analysis.
“One application involves analysing policy wordings to quickly identify clauses that deviate from our preferred standards. Another use case is automating the extraction of treaty characteristics, helping teams enter data more quickly and accurately,” he said.
Overall, it is unequivocal that these innovations have led to faster processing times, improved data quality and increased productivity. Just as importantly, they also allow teams at Arundo Re to focus on higher-value analysis, making their roles more intellectually engaging.
Bridging the protection gap
Deviating a little on our conversation, Mr Montador said innovation will play a major role in narrowing the insurance protection gap, particularly in regions where it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain coverage for catastrophe risks.
“One promising approach is the use of parametric insurance, which offers predefined payouts based on measurable triggers rather than traditional claims processes. While such products may not offer full back-to-back coverage, they can still provide meaningful financial relief for clients facing hard-to-place risks,” he said.
“We’re seeing progress in the scientific understanding and modelling of secondary perils such as wildfires, severe convective storms, and hail. By leveraging new data and methodologies, the industry can better quantify and manage these risks, ultimately making it possible to offer more accurate and adequate capacity,” he said.
Unlocking Asia’s ILS potential
Mr Montador said that ILS, including sidecars, catastrophe bonds and collateralised reinsurance, have significant potential to complement traditional reinsurance and bring in capacity from financial markets.
While well-established in regions like Bermuda, the ILS ecosystem is still developing in Asia.
He identified three notable factors necessary to support the growth of ILS in the region:
- Strong and supporting ecosystem:
This includes legal experts familiar with ILS structures, specialist managing entities for special purpose vehicles (SPVs), trustees to manage collateral and payouts, brokers with ILS capabilities, actuarial consultants and robust catastrophe modelling firms. “Granular, high-quality data is essential,” he said.
- Government support and regulatory alignment:
“A coordinated political will across ministries and regulators is critical to establishing a functioning ILS framework. Regulators need to be educated about ILS and encouraged to view it as an alternative but equivalent tool to traditional reinsurance,” he said.
- Critical mass of issuers and investors:
To sustain a healthy ILS market, he said a pipeline of issuers willing to launch ILS products like CAT bonds is needed. Hong Kong is emerging as a promising hub for ILS in Asia, though he noted that Arundo Re has chosen France as its platform, welcoming Asian investors under its regulatory framework.
With these foundations in place, he believes Asia’s ILS market could gain momentum and provide much-needed capacity in an era of growing catastrophe exposures.
Mitigating climate risks and cyber threats: Arundo Re’s strategic approach
Mr Montador said climate change is a critical issue, especially given Arundo Re’s portfolio.
“We are actively incorporating climate change considerations into our risk assessments to track how it evolves. Leveraging modernisation and advanced data capture from multiple sources, we aim to optimise our use of models- models that can project from the current climate state into the next 20 or 30 years – to understand future risk trajectories,” he said.
“When it comes to cyber threats, however, we are more cautious. Although there are emerging models in this space, there is a noticeable discrepancy in data quality and availability; US markets have far more data than European markets, for example. As a result, current cyber models are not yet suitable for reinsurance-level application,” he said.
This is an area where it is difficult to handle accumulation and where insurance is combined with prevention and crisis management.
“We believe cyber insurance cannot stand alone. It must be part of a tripartite solution: prevention, insurance, and crisis response,” he said.
Strengthening Arundo Re’s portfolio
Looking ahead to next year, Arundo Re plans to continue growing, especially in Asia. Markets they are looking at are China, India and Japan.
“The market is softening, as evidenced during recent renewals. However, as an industry, we must remain vigilant about the impact of future claims inflation. Accurately pricing this factor into future claims will be critical to maintaining sustainability,” he said.
Arundo Re’s company policy is deeply rooted in analytics and operational efficiency, as they strive to deliver insurance services through streamlined and effective processes.
“While technology and technical tools have brought significant advancements, we still see insurance as a people-driven business. Relationships matter. Trust matters. We want our clients to enjoy working with us – to find it easy, efficient and collaborative. That’s our goal. Ultimately, it’s about maintaining trust and human connection, which we believe are essential to long-term success,” Mr Montador said, while wrapping up the interview. A