Rates for property catastrophe reinsurance fell sharply at the January 1 renewals and handed leverage back to buyers, according to Michael van Slooten, head of market analysis at Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions.

Speaking to TheRoyal Gazette on Friday, Mr Van Slooten pointed to “pretty intense” competition in North America and double‑digit price reductions in line with the global trend.

“Certainly when it comes to property cat business, the competition was pretty much on a global basis, right? Most territories were seeing double-digit reductions at January 1. Broadly speaking, that was the type of reduction we were seeing pretty much across the world,” Mr Van Slooten said.

In its January 2026 Reinsurance Renewal Report, Aon reports competition among reinsurers in the North American property catastrophe market, with preferred risks broadly seeing double-digit rate reductions at January 1. Property renewals in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific also saw double-digit discounts for non-loss impacted accounts.

Meanwhile, Guy Carpenter’s Global Property Catastrophe Rate on Line Index dropped 12 per cent at the 2026 renewals, with Europe down 15 per cent and loss‑free Asia‑Pacific programmes also securing double‑digit reductions.

The shift comes only three years after what Mr Van Slooten described as a hard‑market “reset” in 2023, when reinsurers pushed through steep price increases, raised attachment points and narrowed coverage in response to heavy losses.

“There was a big reset in the market in 2023 that, if you like, was a hard market, and so you have to look at what’s happening today, really relative to where we were then,” he said.

Aon estimates global reinsurance capital rose by about $45 billion year-on-year to roughly $760 billion by the end of September, with reinsurers posting an average annualised return on equity of 16 per cent in the first nine months of 2025.

That profitability has translated into intense competition on price, but Mr Van Slooten argued that the industry has not simply gone back to the conditions of the last soft market.

“Broadly speaking, pricing is down in double digits, and this is all cat business I'm talking about,” he said, while stressing that key structural protections remain in place.

“We certainly haven’t gone back to where we were in the last soft market. That’s the important thing. So in relation to five or six years ago, for example, the coverage today, I would say, is still tighter and the retentions, the attachment points, are pretty much the same as they were in 2023.”

Buyers have used the savings to broaden coverage and add earnings‑protection features, he said, rather than simply cutting spend. This was helped by what market participants describe as surplus capacity north of 25 per cent at the renewals, according to Guy Carpenter’s report.

Mr Van Slooten warned, however, that the present phase of double‑digit rate cuts depends heavily on capital strength and a mild hurricane season. If a major loss cycle hits while excess capacity is still “chasing the same risk [and] the same premium pool”, as he put it, reinsurers may once again seek to reassert their pricing power and tighten their terms.