Welcome to the RVS 2025 GR Annual Edition!

Welcome back to Monte Carlo, where old world charm meets nouveau riche bling, to attend the 67th edition of the Rendez-Vous de September (RVS), still the biggest, glitziest and most glamorous event in the reinsurance executive diary.

This annual edition of GR aims to provide the reader with a fair reflection of the main talking points going into this year’s Rendez-Vous, with a range of senior interviews, insights, analyses, and features, relevant to a long list of lines of re/insurance business.

The topics ripe for discussion in 2025 are a mix of the old and the new. First, let’s look at the biggest question of the Rendez-Vous, one that never really changes: What’s going to happen to pricing at 1/1? Nobody dares answer that question yet, of course.

There’s the usual jeopardy as flights land in Nice, and everyone is acutely aware that the carefully curated data and negotiating points could be upturned by the sudden appearance of a gigantic Florida hurricane in the days or weeks to come.

Feelings of reinsurer déjà vu might also arise from our current place in the underwriting cycle. Rates are on the whole gently softening, but the consensus view is that even if reinsurers continue to supply ample capacity and bend to competitive

instincts, they still have plenty of runway available to maintain pricing adequacy, and, storms allowing, showcase healthy profits to investors. SO

Technology is a huge focus, maybe on a greater scale than ever before. This is not merely the enthusiasm for insurtech or even ‘digital transformation’ seen in several previous years.

There is now widespread excitement about the near-universal application of AI, and its potential for fresh insights, big savings, and efficiencies, and the still-unknown capabilities that it will bring. The biggest catastrophe shock of 2025 has been the LA wildfires.

Extreme weather events are indicating in real-time the immediacy of the climate emergency. Floods and wildfires are happening more frequently and with greater severity, even if it is hard to attribute them to global warming as they occur. This industry loves data as well as definitions, but in years to come, the climate change we are already seeing will be even more belatedly obvious.

Also forebodingly, geopolitical risk remains a daily news item. However, there is some optimism here, too. As more firms acknowledge that a new era of political uncertainty is here to stay, there is increased emphasis on finding the business opportunities that accompany the risks – from conflicts and cargo to tariffs and trade credit.

Enjoy reading this year’s GR Monte Carlo edition – and see you around the salons.

To download the full Monte Carlo RVS 2025 annual issue of GR, click here.