South African business ‘favours reinsurers’ – ASR’s Paradine

Africa Specialty Risks (ASR) is understandably upbeat about Africa’s prospects for reinsurance business. GR spoke to Sean Paradine, its head of treaty reinsurance.

Paradine (pictured) suggested the insurance world is “still catching up” to African opportunities.

Mikir Shah, CEO of ASR, initially set up the business because “he couldn’t get insurance for his family business” in Kenya, Paradine noted.

South Africa is the largest source of treaty business within ASR’s book, as it is within Africa’s re/insurance market as a whole.

“We still feel that it’s a market that favours reinsurers, albeit not as high as it was,” Paradine said, referring to generally softening reinsurance market cycle.

“People are talking about softening reinsurance rates,” he said. “South Africa has the biggest programmes, and is seeing deductions, yes, but there are minimal deductions beyond South Africa.

If the client has losses, that’s a different case, as you’d expect,” he added.

“However, the last big catastrophe event to result in significant insured losses was flooding in South Africa in 2023. Since then, two very good years of business have been underwritten,” Paradine continued.

Most of the company’s book consists of direct and facultative reinsurance business, but roughly 20% of ASR’s reinsurance book is made up of treaty reinsurance business, under Paradine’s management.

The company was set up in 2020, backed by Helios Investment Partners, growing its managing general agent (MGA) business steadily with local market networks and partnerships across Africa, and has since then added its own risk-bearing capital to its book of business.

In 2024 it launched Syndicate 2454 at Lloyd’s, the first to focus exclusively on African and Middle Eastern business. At launch the firm noted African risks accounted for just 2% of Lloyd’s business.

This year it announced the launch of the first Africa Focused Lloyd’s consortium, ‘Baobab’, underwriting political risk, trade credit, political violence and terrorism, property, energy, construction and liability lines.

Hind Gouriach, a treaty underwriter within Paradine’s team, cited increased demand for reinsurance in Morocco, Africa’s second largest insurance market, where ASR established its Casablanca office in November 2022.

She listed energy, property and construction as three growth areas in the North African country.

Morocco is due to host two large football tournaments – the African Cup of Nations in December 2025, followed by co-hosting the World Cup in 2030, alongside Spain and Portugal.

While ASR’s business is spread across multiple offices, from Francophone Africa to its presence within the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Paradine emphasised ASR Re’s Bermuda operation as well as Lloyd’s as giving cedants different options.

“We used to have to track people down, but now they’re calling and asking how we can work together. It’s all very positive, because we want people to know that ASR is here and that we’re growing,” he added.