Atrium Underwriters — the managing agency of Lloyd’s of London Syndicate 609 — is to exit the marine reinsurance business in January 2023.
The underwriter’s Marine XL reinsurance book of business will be put into run-off.
“Continuing in the class was deemed unviable as Atrium look to focus their efforts and capacity into their direct specialty classes,” Atrium said in a statement.
The move does not affect Atrium’s primary marine insurance business.
Andrew Hedges, underwriter for Atrium’s marine reinsurance account, will stay in the business to manage the run-off process.
The departure comes despite a significant increase in capacity at the Lloyd’s of London syndicate. Atrium announced its Syndicate 609 has increased its capacity from £652 ($788m) in 2022 to £875 in 2023.
Some market pundits have suggested that the marine insurance industry could be set for another cut in capacity, despite a hardening of the market and improved profitability over the past two to three years.
The last significant round of cutbacks came after the Decile 10 programme at Lloyd’s of London in 2018, which forced syndicates to withdraw capacity from unprofitable sectors such as marine insurance.
Since 2020 the marine insurance market has seen an influx of new capacity seeking to take advantage of a hardening market.
Heavy losses
However, heavy losses sustained by specialty insurers and reinsurers this year — brought on primarily by claims related to Hurricane Ian and the war in Ukraine — have forced them to again review their business.
Despite improvements in profitability marine insurance has continued to be one of the worst-performing sectors and many underwriters are looking to deploy the capacity in more profitable areas.
