Arrow Risk Management has entered the property facultative reinsurance market with a new underwriting practice and a senior hire, a move that comes as fac reinsurance pricing swings decisively in favor of buyers following years of hardening that reshaped the broader reinsurance landscape.
The specialist MGA platform has appointed Paul Witzenfeld, a decades-long veteran of the London property market, to lead the practice.
The business will write property facultative reinsurance on both a primary and excess of loss basis, targeting Fortune 1000 companies and similarly sized organizations worldwide.
The timing is deliberate. At the January 2026 renewals, average property facultative rates in the US and Canada fell by 25% to 30%, with even loss-affected accounts seeing double-digit reductions. Moody's has described the current rate environment as the steepest price decline in over a decade.
The softening extends well beyond North America. Howden Re data showed that direct and fac reinsurance recorded rate-on-line reductions of 17.5% at January 1 - steeper than property catastrophe treaty or retrocession.
In Europe, low loss activity and surplus capacity drove reductions of 10% to 20%, while risk-adjusted pricing for loss-free non-proportional programs in Asia-Pacific generally fell by 10% to 20%.
Underpinning the shift is a wall of capital. AM Best projects reinsurance capacity entering 2026 at approximately $540 billion in traditional dedicated capital and $120 billion in insurance-linked securities, bolstered by a third consecutive year of robust earnings. Other estimates run higher – Guy Carpenter put the total at $660 billion, while Aon pegged it at $735 billion.
Amwins, in its 2026 outlook released earlier this year, noted that as carriers search for growth in a shrinking marketplace, high-performing MGAs are likely to receive additional capacity for deployment – a dynamic that plays directly to Arrow Risk's platform model.
Whether the favorable conditions persist is less certain. AM Best in January revised its outlook for global reinsurance to stable from positive, with analyst Dan Hofmeister noting that rate declines had brought pricing closer to pre-2023 renewal levels.
Fitch Ratings has maintained a deteriorating sector outlook, though it forecasts only a modest decline in 2026 return on equity, from the high teens to the mid-teens.
J.P. Morgan analysts have projected that prices are unlikely to turn positive unless the industry faces insured losses of $100 billion or higher, while Mizuho Americas expects property catastrophe reinsurance rates to remain adequate but less profitable across peak zones.
Arrow Risk's chief underwriting officer, Mark Harrington, described Witzenfeld as someone who brings "exceptional depth and breadth of knowledge across the London market and internationally," adding that the platform's digital infrastructure would support rapid scaling of the fac reinsurance practice.
