Sidecars – Is now the right time to be taken for a ride?
Casting one’s mind back to the heady premium days of post Katrina / Wilma, life for the reinsurance market, including the nascent ILS market, was good. It was what in the industry is called a ‘hard market’, a market where terms are hard i.e. high premiums combined with narrow coverage scope. Premiums had sky-rocketed and capacity remained fairly scarce. Once they had put to work their own capital, enterprising reinsurers pondered how to continue to capitalise on this boom time.