The softening reinsurance market will separate high-performing carriers from the rest at upcoming renewals, with underwriting discipline and operational efficiency becoming decisive factors. Convex Group Co-founder and CEO Paul Brand told executives at PwC's Rendez-Vous de Septembre breakfast in Monte Carlo that companies with relevance, resilience, and efficiency "do absolutely fine during this phase of the cycle."
Brand said the market cycle tends to expose carrier quality and positioning rather than presenting a uniform challenge. Firms that maintain clear market propositions are best equipped to handle downward pricing and competitive pressure. His assessment points to a widening performance gap as conditions shift.
AI value concentrates among a minority of firms
PwC also hosted a panel titled "From Disruption to Reinvention: The Future of Reinsurance - Powered by AI," featuring PwC's Prafull Sharma, Andreas Hufenstuhl, and Ashish Jain, alongside Sherif Zakhary, CEO of Strategy and Technology Group and Inpoint at Aon. Findings from PwC's 2026 AI Performance Study, cited during the session, showed that only 20% of companies capture 74% of total AI value.
The most AI-fit firms achieve 7.2× higher AI-driven financial performance than their peers. Panellists said top performers direct AI at outcomes that matter, build repeatable foundations, and embed the technology enterprise-wide rather than confining it to isolated pilot programs.
Execution speed separates winners from the rest
Matt Britten, Partner-Insurance at PwC Bermuda, said success across both market headwinds and technological shifts depends on early, repeatable execution. "The winners won't be defined by the tools they can access, but by how well they convert them into repeatable value," Britten said. "As the cycle softens, the leaders will be those who bring these decisions into the conversation early and build the foundations to act at scale."
Britten noted that discussions at Rendez-Vous centred on rate outlooks and the direction of terms and conditions, but broader conversations addressed multiple forces reshaping reinsurance. These include strong reinsurer capital positions and options for deploying excess capital, sustained third-party capital interest in specialty and casualty classes, and increasingly important partnerships between MGAs and reinsurers. Private credit's potential role beyond life reinsurance and growth opportunities in data centres, emerging risks, and closing the global protection gap also featured prominently.
Why this matters for executives and strategy leaders
The message from Monte Carlo is blunt: soft markets do not punish everyone equally. They punish firms without clear positioning and operational discipline. Strategy leaders should treat the current cycle as a stress test for their underwriting frameworks and cost structures. On AI, the PwC data makes clear that pilot programs will not close the value gap. The 20% of companies capturing three-quarters of AI returns are the ones who embedded it into core operations and pointed it at measurable financial outcomes. For executives, the priority is converting AI access into repeatable performance before the pricing cycle compresses margins further.
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