Property cat market still “outstanding”. Mt. Logan doing “terrific job” raising funds: Everest CEO

Everest Group, the global insurance and reinsurance specialist, acknowledged rising competition across reinsurance, but its CEO Jim Williamson highlighted that pricing on its mid-year renewal portfolio was roughly flat, with preferential rates and terms achieved, while he sees the property catastrophe market as still disciplined and the market as still “very hard”.

Everest announced its second-quarter results last night, with its reinsurance segment a bright spot in Q2 2025, posting $436 million in underwriting income and a combined ratio of 85.6%, as our sister publication Reinsurance News reported earlier.

The company has grown its property catastrophe reinsurance book, with PML metrics rising accordingly.

Speaking during an earnings call just now, Everest CEO Jim Williamson highlighted that property cat reinsurance is still “a very hard market” and said it remains one of the hardest in living memory, when you compare it back to particularly soft market’s such as 2017.

Williamson also pointed to the flexibility that the Mt. Logan Capital Management business provides to Everest, in managing third-party capital with a largely property catastrophe focus.

He further explained that the Mt. Logan Capital Management team continues to be successful in raising new funds, providing a further lever for Everest to optimise its catastrophe exposure in partnership with third-party investors.

On reinsurance market conditions and in particular the property catastrophe segment, Williamson is bullish on pricing and terms, seeing it as “outstanding” still.

During the call the CEO responded to a question as to whether underwriting property catastrophe risk can deliver better returns on capital than share buybacks for Everest, higher than 25% ROE’s.

Williamson said, “Absolutely it means north of 25 for property cat, and I think in ome of the peak zones, whether it’s southeast wind or Cal quake, etc, you’re looking well higher than that. I think, by the way, that’s true of just about every cat market around the world. I’m a little more thoughtful or careful about European Wind, but pretty much everything else is well north of that kind of number.

“Hence our interest in continuing to write the business and it’s also why a number of times during today’s call, you’ve heard me push back on any notion that this is a soft market.

“Yes, rates are going down, but it’s still outstanding.”

Earlier in the call he had stated, “If you’re if you’re trying to position your cat portfolio at the very high layers, which is, you know, more risk remote, where you’re competing with cat bond capacity, you probably are seeing more price pressure.

“We feel like we’re in a sweet spot. We’re away from the attritional losses. We’re a lead market and so we’re getting to drive a lot lot of the underwriting action that’s happening on the programmes we’re participating in. And so we’re not feeling the degree of price competition that some brokers are speaking to.”

On how the market is behaving, Williamson said, “You just see this very consistent view that says that discipline in the market is going to be sustained and again, it informs our expectations as we as we go forward. That’s why we grew it at the 6/1 renewal, and in the pockets of the 7/1 renewal that we really liked, we also were able to deploy more capacity a really attractive margins.

In terms of the trade off between capital return and growth into into the property cat market, I mean, the most important thing to note is we’re doing both, and we have the capital strength to do both.

“I will say, though that if you look at the expected return from property cat pretty much everywhere in the world, and certainly in our peak zones like southeast wind storm, or California earthquake and a bunch of the others Japan, etc, the ROE’s are still very, very strong, and I think would even exceed the attractiveness of repurchase so that’s why we’re continuing this strategy of pursuing both both actions.”

He also commented, “We talk about softening,one of the things I like to remind folks about is that if we were sitting at a price level that we experienced, that this industry experienced in 2017, 18, 19, and then suddenly rates corrected to where they are now, we would call it one of the greatest hard markets in living memory.

“Rates are very strong in property cat, and I have absolutely no problem deploying incremental capacity for our best clients on well structured accounts at the rates that we’re receiving today and the rates, frankly, that I expect to be receiving next year.”

Then, commenting after a question on Everest’s increased catastrophe PML’s, Williamson noted the role of its hedging through catastrophe bonds and third-party capital via its Mt. Logan Capital Management platform.

He explained, “Just to break down the PML increase, some of that is certainly growth in our gross book, in both divisions. And then we continue to optimise our hedging in terms of where we’re purchasing our cat bonds, really focusing on managing tail exposures, offset somewhat by growth in assets under management in our Mt. Logan platform which is doing a terrific job of raising funds.

“So when you balance all that out, I think we’re making an excellent trade, and it’s one that I expect to continue to play out in the coming renewal phase.”

It’s clear the Everest CEO and his business continue to feel the property catastrophe reinsurance market is both well-priced and still disciplined, while its own use of third-party investor relationships and capital are helping to sustain its appetite for that marketplace.

One other reply to a question of note, that reflects the sentiment on the property cat market, was Williamson saying, “I think anyone that’s describing the current cat environment as soft is not well informed. It is not soft.

“It may be softer than it was a year ago, rates have come down, whether that’s five, ten points. But again, compared to where rates would have been, and you can look at any of the broker rate indexes to prove this point out, they were up massively over where they were in the 2010’s. This remains a very hard market.

“We think the risk-reward trade off that’s available to us today is is pretty clear, and it speaks to the idea that we can deploy this capital and get rewarded for it.”