Market News
Reinsurance firm signs up 18 underwriters
Thursday March 02 2023
Mr Charles Etemesi CEO, WAICA Re Kenya ltd. FILE PHOTO | POOL
Reinsurance firm WAICA Re Kenya says it has signed up 18 primary underwriters with whom it shares risks since it opened shop in October 2018.
The company is a subsidiary of the WAICA Reinsurance Corporation, a West African firm with headquarters in Sierra Leone but present in other African countries including Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Burundi and Zambia.
WAICA Re Kenya is the fourth largest of five reinsurance players in the local market with a share of 9.7 per cent.
Read: WAICA Re unveils Kenya subsidiary
“Out of a total of 37 general Insurance companies in Kenya, we are currently on 18 companies’ treaty retrocession programs while in the region we are doing business with 45 companies,” said Charles Etemesi, chief executive of WAICA Re Kenya and East Africa.
“We still see a lot of potential in our partnership with you and we hope to grow the number going forward.”
A retrocession agreement is a contract between two insurance companies where one company agrees to assume responsibility for another’s future claims.
Primary insurers pay premiums to reinsurers which commit to sharing some of the losses arising from claims filed with the companies serving policyholders directly.
Kenya Re is the largest reinsurer controlling 45.1 per cent of the reinsurance business, followed by Continental Re at 28.8 per cent, East African Re at 11.4 per cent and Ghana at 4.8 per cent.
Read: Kenya Re draws 32 percent of premiums from India market
Kenya Re has both treaty and mandatory concessions implying that all insurers in Kenya must reinsure some part of their business with Kenya Re.
