Ernie Garateix, CEO of Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc., the nationally expansive, Florida headquartered property and casualty insurer, anticipates the June reinsurance renewals offering his company a chance to secure incremental capacity and improved pricing.
“Reinsurance remains a critical component of our business and we have maintained a stable indemnity-based reinsurance program at manageable costs, with an excellent panel of highly rated and collateralized reinsurers, Heritage’s CEO explained.
Going on to say that, “We regularly meet with our reinsurance and ILS partners who continue to support our growth and who we anticipate will offer incremental capacity as we look to our June 1 renewal.”
There is already evidence of the desire to secure incremental reinsurance capacity through Heritage Insurance Holdings latest venture into the catastrophe bond market.
Around a fortnight ago, Heritage returned to the catastrophe bond market with an initial target to secure $250 million or more in collateralized US named storm reinsurance from a Citrus Re Ltd. (Series 2026-1) issuance.
That deal remains in the market, but from launch has the potential to become the insurer’s largest cat bond sponsorship since at least 2016.
Heritage currently has $535 million of catastrophe bond risk capital outstanding across three Citrus Re transactions, according to our cat bond sponsor leaderboard. With $235 million of that scheduled to mature before the 2026 hurricane season, the latest sponsorship could more than replace that it seems, demonstrating the insurer’s appetite to secure incremental protection.
At its mid-year 2025 reinsurance renewal, Heritage secured almost $2.5 billion of limit, up 13% on the $2.194 billion renewed a year earlier.
Heritage CEO Garateix sees still-improving conditions in the Florida property insurance market as one driver of improving reinsurance market conditions.
“Additionally, we continue to see the benefits of tort reform as industry loss expectations for Hurricane Milton have been steadily coming down, largely due to reduced litigation which benefits not only us, but our panel of reinsurers,” he explained.
Adding that, “Given the improved litigation environment in Florida, the lack of catastrophe losses and the reinsurance capacity entering the traditional and ILS markets, we are optimistic that reinsurance pricing will continue to improve in 2026.
“We also believe that favorable reinsurance will benefit the consumer, in terms of the cost of insurance.”
