Bermuda’s reinsurers delivered solid underwriting results in 2024 despite another year of heavy catastrophe losses worldwide, according to a new market report from ratings agency AM Best.

The United States and Bermuda composite posted an undiscounted, combined ratio of 89.5 per cent, pointing to the segment’s resilience compared with Europe’s “Big Four” reinsurers, which reported 86.4 per cent under the new International Financial Reporting Standard 17.

A combined ratio, meaning claims and expenses as a proportion of premiums, is a key gauge of underwriting profitability.

Casualty reserves remain a pressure point, though. AM Best noted that the US and Bermuda recorded a near-neutral prior-year reserve development of -0.3 per cent in 2024. This reflects a split between companies strengthening their reserves and others releasing them, the report explained.

The island continues to dominate the insurance-linked securities space. Global ILS capital reached a record $107 billion by the end of 2024, while outstanding catastrophe bonds hit an all-time $52.7 billion in mid-2025. Both areas are driven largely from Bermuda structures.

“The expansion of the ILS segment is primarily due to investor appetite for robust returns and well-defined remote risks,” AM Best stated in the report.

Innovation also kept Bermuda in the spotlight. In 2024, the Bermuda Monetary Authority approved the world’s first bitcoin-only life insurer, Meanwhile. The company is licensed under the regulator’s new innovative class for long-term insurers.

However, AM Best noted the absence of a wave of new start-ups in Bermuda in the wake of recent hard markets.

The report added: “The absence of material new global reinsurance entrants ensures structural market discipline is maintained.”

Despite six successive years of global insured catastrophe losses topping $100 billion, reinsurers are still expected to post full-year operating results above the cost of capital, the report found.