There are certain traits of hard reinsurance market cycles: prices rise, terms and conditions tighten, and new Bermuda reinsurers are formed to help fill capacity needs–known in the past by the market as the “class of 1992,” “class of 2001,” or the “class of 2005.”
At least that was previously the pattern. During the current hard market, however, there hasn’t been a spate of new entrants–in Bermuda or elsewhere. Only several new reinsurers have been able to find investors with the appetite to provide sufficient financial support that would be needed for underwriting a substantial property/casualty business. The class of 2025 is mainly limited to Cedar Trace’s Mereo Insurance and Lloyd’s reinsurer OAK Reinsurance.
Mereo Advisors–a Bermuda holding company that was renamed Cedar Trace Ltd.–began reinsurance underwriting as Mereo Insurance in January 2025. The company is led by industry veteran Brian Duperreault, the former executive chairman of American International Group (AIG).
At last month’s reinsurance Rendez-Vous de Septembre, there were rumors (once again) that reinsurance executives were at the meeting seeking investors to help them form three more reinsurers to create a “class of 2026.” But as always, the devil is in the detail as well as the amount of money that can be raised from investors. (The domiciles of the startups were said to be Bermuda and London.)
Similar rumors about Mereo, OAK Re, and Alpine Re were heard at last year’s RVS–but only Mereo and OAK Re had successful fundraising and were able to launch. Alpine Re wasn’t able to get the funding to launch a $1 billion startup, so it threw in the towel–at least temporarily. (OAK Re’s parent, OAK Global, announced last month it will launch a new syndicate to write retrocession business with an appetite for property and specialty classes in January 2026.)
Some attendees at this year’s RVS meeting questioned the timing of possible 2026 startups, given the softening pricing seen during this year’s renewals.
But Cedar Trace’s Executive Chairman Duperreault said the timing of the formation of Cedar Trace and Mereo Insurance has worked well because the market continues to be strong across a lot of lines of business. “It’s good to be an underwriter in specialty, casualty, and property right now. So, having this across-the-board strategy is helpful,” he said.
In an interview with Insurance Journal, Duperreault described the reinsurer’s strategy as broad-based and multi-class. “We are writing 25 different classes of insurance business, such as marine, aviation, energy, and property, on a risk-weighted basis,” which creates a portfolio balancing effect and provides “a pretty steady result.”
“Each one of the 25 is going to go up and down, particularly if they’re in the more volatile portions of the business,” Duperreault continued.