Reporting to Tony Melia, Chief Executive Officer of Willis Re International, Mr. Pinette will be based in London and will lead Willis Re’s development in the life and health market in the EMEA region.

Mr. Pinette has more than 30 years’ experience in life reinsurance, and most recently spent eight years as CEO of Guy Carpenter’s European Life Reinsurance operations.

Mr. Melia said: “Franck’s experience and proven expertise will significantly enhance the capabilities of our International Life & Health practice, which, led by Greg Solomon in Hong Kong and supported by Nigel Sedgwick in London, works in partnership with our market leading Willis Towers Watson life consulting teams.”

Alkis Tsimaratos and Dirk Spenner, Managing Directors for EMEA, Willis Re added: “We are delighted that Franck has joined Willis Re to lead the EMEA Life & Health practice, which represents one of our most exciting growth areas.

“With the advent of Solvency II and other regulatory frameworks around the world, life insurers are much more conscious of the impact that reinsurance can have on their balance sheets, P&L and wider risk management.

“As clients increasingly review their reinsurance arrangements Willis Re can provide impartial advice and broader market access.”

The product has been developed with new premium payment and claims processes to ensure it adheres to the key principles of Islamic insurance.

As part of the agreement, AXA will directly manage the trading and underwriting of the product and utilize Cobalt’s in-house Shariah scholars who provide each client with a Shariah compliant certification.

Ryan Birbeck, Head of Real Estate Specialty, AXA Insurance, said: “We are always exploring ways to reach potential customers and, with overseas investment continuing to flow into the UK real estate sector, a Shariah-compliant insurance policy was an obvious addition to our suite of products.”

Net premiums for the quarter were $2.6 billion, up from $2.4 billion in the same period in 2017, with favorable net currency effects of $79.3 million.

RGA President and Chief Executive Officer Anna Manning said: “Our operating results were below our expectations this quarter, but this reflects normal volatility of claims that is inherent in our business.

“As we have pointed out in the past, the nature of our business is such that we can experience some volatility of claims, in both directions, in the short term.

“However, any volatility tends to even out over longer periods, and our diversified global platform has helped mitigate overall relative volatility in recent periods.”

The risk transfer blog Artemis quoted KBW as saying there continues to be a strong appetite from institutional investors for catastrophe bonds and that ILS will be a factor that limits the ability of the reinsurance market to raise prices as much as it would like at June 1 and July 1 renewals.

KBW said the ILS market is experiencing “continuing inflows that we expect to limit mid-year property catastrophe reinsurance rate increases”.

They also said recent broker reports had shown that the catastrophe losses of 2017 haven’t resulted in reinsurance price spikes outside of the impacted areas.