Reinsurance News
Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway is an American multinational conglomerate holding company, famous for its diverse portfolio of wholly-owned businesses. This page contains news about Berkshire Hathway’s insurance and reinsurance businesses, as well as its financial reporting.
Within that, Berkshire Hathaway has a meaningful insurance and reinsurance operation and under the watch of Warren Buffett this has grown into one of the most meaningful players in the global reinsurance market.
Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group encompasses GenRe, TransRe and its life reinsurance operations.
Given its size and breadth of operations, Berkshire Hathaway has famously used the insurance premium float generated by its primary and reinsurance operations to fuel its enormous investment firepower.
With such diversification and depth of capital across its business, Berkshire Hathaway is know for being strategic and tactical in how it underwrites reinsurance business, growing and shrinking its capital deployments into the sector depending on its view of price adequacy and relative value compared to its other opportunities.
Berkshire (BHSI) names Rachel Simon as SVP
9th March 2021
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance (BHSI), part of Berkshire Hathaway, has appointed Rachel Simon as Senior Vice President (SVP), Head of U.S. Commercial Private and Nonprofit, Professional Lines and Transactional Liability Claims. Simon joins BHSI with over two decades of Executive and Professional Lines experience, most recently working at Great American Insurance ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway’s reinsurance underwriting loss widens on COVID & catastrophes
27th February 2021
Berkshire Hathaway’s insurance and reinsurance business suffered the effects of the global pandemic and severe catastrophe events in 2020, driving the reinsurance underwriting loss higher to -$2.7bn for the year. A year ago, the reinsurance business of the Warren Buffett owned conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group, fell to an underwriting loss ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway (BHSI) adds Brady Head to Executive leadership
7th January 2021
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance (BHSI), a division of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, has appointed Brady Head as Senior Vice President (SVP), Product Line Officer for D&O Liability Insurance in North America. Head joins the company after 27 years with global insurer and reinsurer AIG, where he most recently served as Head ... Read the full article
Amazon, Berkshire-backed healthcare venture Haven to shut down
5th January 2021
Haven, the joint healthcare venture launched by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan in 2018, is set to shut down and disband by the end of the month, sources at CNBC have reported. The three companies originally partnered to tackle the “ballooning costs of healthcare” in the US market through ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway GUARD selects new commercial fleet telematics program
11th December 2020
Berkshire Hathaway GUARD, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s global re/insurer, has selected IMS to provide a new commercial fleet insurance program. TrackMRI (Monitor, React, Improve) is a commercial fleet insurance telematics solution that includes device logistics support, data collection, scoring, fleet behaviour assessment and program analytics. As part of the program, IMS ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway plans virtual 2021 shareholder meeting
3rd December 2020
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has announced that its 2021 annual meeting of shareholders will be held virtually on May 1st. The format for next year’s meeting will be similar to the 2020 meeting, which could not be held in-person due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Like this year, shareholders will instead be ... Read the full article
Tom Macfarlane to lead Berkshire’s (BHSI) Europe expansion
1st December 2020
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance has named Tom Macfarlane to lead the expansion of its capabilities in Europe, by underwriting Downstream Energy Property Insurance. Macfarlane comes to Berkshire Hathaway with over 40 years of insurance experience spanning both the underwriting and broking sides of the business. He has held various leadership ... Read the full article
Berkshire (BHSI) appoints Lauren Finnis to new VP role
25th November 2020
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company, the insurance arm of Warren Buffett's global insurance and reinsurance company, has appointed Lauren Finnis as Vice President, Customer & Broker Engagement, for the Central Region based in Chicago. Previously, she was Vice President of Customer & Broker Engagement for the Eastern Region. Finnis, who has over ... Read the full article
Berkshire reports 9M 2020 P&C reinsurance underwriting loss
9th November 2020
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has reported a P&C reinsurance pre-tax underwriting loss of $706 million for the first nine months of 2020 against a gain of $472 million a year earlier, as loss and loss adjustment expenses increased by 48% to $2.4 billion. The elevated level of catastrophe losses during the ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway appoints SVP for Customer & Broker Engagement
30th October 2020
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance (BHSI) has announced of appointment of Renee Yozzi as Senior Vice President of Customer & Broker Engagement for the Eastern U.S. Region. Yozzi brings nearly 20 years and an excellent duality of experience to BHSI. She most recently held the title of Director, Strategic and Enterprise Risk ... Read the full article
Average combined ratio of the world’s top reinsurers declined in 2019
2nd September 2020
Analysis of the Top 50 Global Reinsurance Groups reveals that, year-on-year, combined ratios trended higher for some of the largest players in the market in 2019 as underwriting profitability dipped for the cohort. When ranked by unaffiliated gross written premiums (GWP) in 2019, the top ten remains relatively unchanged year-on-year, ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway P&C reinsurance loss driven by Covid-19 & prior year liabilities
9th August 2020
Berkshire Hathaway reported a significant level of losses within its property and casualty reinsurance business for the second-quarter of 2020, as the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and negative prior year reserve development on longer-tailed liabilities drove the division to a loss for the period. Overall, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reported ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty launches EIL insurance in France
10th June 2020
Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company (BHSI), the insurance arm of Warren Buffett's global insurance and reinsurance company, has introduced Environmental Impairment Liability (EIL) Insurance in France. The new policy pairs coverage for multiple environmental risks with technical and legal support to help insureds mitigate environmental incidents and claims. “Our experienced environmental team has ... Read the full article
Berkshire would have written pandemic insurance if people had asked for it: Buffett
4th May 2020
Warren Buffett has said that Berkshire Hathaway would have been willing to write pandemic insurance at the right price if people had asked for the coverage. Speaking during the conglomerate's first-quarter 2020 earnings call, after the firm announced losses within its re/insurance businesses and a huge unrealised investment loss, Chief ... Read the full article
Berkshire Hathaway reports $489m Q1 reinsurance loss, $55.5bn investment loss
2nd May 2020
Warren Buffett's conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter losses to its primary insurance and reinsurance businesses, in part due to the impacts of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. But the enormous largely unrealised investment loss of $55.5 billion for the first-quarter of 2020 overshadows all else in the Berkshire Hathaway results today. Berkshire Hathaway ... Read the full article





