Conduit Re hires a PartnerRe property team

Conduit Re has filled the top of its US and global property book with three underwriters hired from PartnerRe, all of them most recently assigned to PartnerRe's catastrophe desks. Conduit Holdings said the appointments will further strengthen expertise across those lines, and chief underwriting officer Stephen Postlewhite described the trio's property-market expertise as invaluable to the execution of Conduit's underwriting strategy.

Aaron Coates, formerly senior vice-president and senior underwriter for global catastrophe at PartnerRe, becomes head of property, and Conduit says he brings more than 25 years of reinsurance and retrocession experience across the Bermuda, London and insurance-linked-securities markets. Mark Mitchell, previously SVP and lead underwriter for North America catastrophe, becomes head of US property after more than 15 years in Bermuda reinsurance concentrated on the North American market, while Dacotah Baksh, who was an AVP and underwriter on PartnerRe's global catastrophe portfolio, joins as a property underwriter with more than eight years of Bermuda experience.

The announcement does not say whether the moves were coordinated, but filling a head of property, a head of US property and an underwriter beneath them from one competitor's catastrophe operation suggests Conduit is assembling a team that already prices and structures property risk together. That also brings a shared pricing culture from inside PartnerRe's cat portfolio, a more specific asset than three individual résumés.

Conduit's bet lands just as Bermuda's renewal cycle tightens; the island's top four reinsurers hold their AM Best ratings as terms tighten across the renewal cycle, this publication has reported. In that environment, extra capacity is easy to come by and difficult to deploy on attractive terms; the edge sits in underwriting judgment, and Conduit has chosen to buy that judgment directly from a competitor rather than wait for it to develop in house. The next renewal will show whether that team prices Conduit's book the way it priced PartnerRe's.