RenaissanceRe halved its investment in gold during the first quarter — a position that stood at $1.2 billion as of the end of last year.

The revelation came from Kevin O’Donnell, RenRe’s chief executive officer, in the Bermudian-based reinsurer’s first-quarter earnings call with analysts yesterday.

Mr O’Donnell also revealed that about 5 per cent of the reinsurer’s investment portfolio is in private credit, an asset class in which the company sees opportunities to grow its exposure.

RenRe posted operating income of $591 million for the first three months of the year and a 22 per cent annualised operating return on equity.

“We reduced our gold position during the quarter by about half,” Mr O’Donnell said. “We originally put that hedge in place to protect the portfolio against inflation and geopolitical risk, and it served that purpose well.

“As markets evolved, we chose to reduce the position, lock in gains and lower potential future volatility in the portfolio.

“Importantly, the position remained profitable both in the quarter and since inception.”

Mr O’Donnell wrote in the RenRe 2025 annual report that the gold position produced a $400 million mark-to-market gain in 2025.

The gains were fuelled by a sharp rise in the price of gold, as geopolitical turbulence and rising inflation risk drove up demand for the precious metal, which has traditionally been seen as a safe haven for investors.

On yesterday’s call, Mr O’Donnell said the private credit portion of the portfolio “enhances our book yield due to the associated illiquidity premium”.

Insurers’ investments in private credit have attracted the interest of regulators, concerned about liquidity, transparency and pricing issues — particularly in Bermuda’s life reinsurance sector, in which several reinsurers are owned by or affiliated with private equity firms.

Robert Qutub, RenRe’s chief financial officer, explained more about RenRe’s private credit investments on yesterday’s call.

“Private credit assets are diversified across managers, sub-strategies, sectors, geographies and vintage years,” Mr Qutub said.

“We invest through institutional closed-end structures run by high-quality managers. We emphasise senior secured lending and other areas where structure, collateral and manager selectivity provide downside protection.

“Further, we have limited exposure to currently strained areas such as software or through BDCs [business development companies].

“We believe current volatility provides opportunities to selectively increase our exposure to private credit.”