Resilience in reinsurance has little to do with weathering a tough year. It’s about building a business that can function 50 or even 100 years from now. That long-term lens is not optional in today’s high-volatility climate - it’s the business model itself.
“Our product is naturally meant to address this tail scenario,” said Kyle Menendez (pictured), managing director at Howden Re. “Is your risk appetite able to be resilient across a landfalling hurricane, or do you have to pivot in that instance?”
Menendez believes the most forward-looking firms in reinsurance don’t just model natural catastrophe - they engineer their organizations to absorb and adapt to it. That includes how they price, how they partner, and how they confront larger societal risks like climate change and legal system abuse.
“That doesn’t mean that the long-term vision should be complacent,” he said. “The most resilient companies are constantly challenging themselves and their forward thinking.”
He pointed to building codes and zoning policy as examples where insurers, reinsurers, and intermediaries should take a more active role - not just leave it to government. Rebuilding in flood-prone areas without adaptation, he said, is the opposite of resilience.
“Did we rebuild in basically the same floodplain area?” he said. “Or have we thought about building houses on stilts or elevating grounds so that we’re building resiliency into the system?”
That kind of structural foresight, Menendez argued, should outweigh the quarterly cycle mindset still prevalent in parts of the industry. The firms that will endure are the ones already asking what the world will look like in 20 years, and whether their products, capital structures, and operational decisions are built for that future.
Menendez brings an unconventional lens to reinsurance. Before joining the industry, he was a collegiate athlete and strength and conditioning coach - roles where pressure and adaptability were constant.
“When I think about the job of an athlete... there's uncertainty constantly. Every 30 seconds, the prism that you're working with changes,” he said. “That’s so apropos to what we’re doing.”
The parallel, he added, lies in preparation. Just as an athlete trains year-round to perform in moments of high stress, reinsurance firms must treat catastrophe modeling and scenario planning as essential training - not back-office theory.
“We’ve been working 364 days out of the year to respond to this type of situation,” he said, referencing the response to a Category 5 hurricane. “We should know how to react.”
That training becomes critical not only in disaster events, but in high-pressure negotiations and portfolio shifts. Stress tests, forward planning, and deep scenario analysis must be the baseline - not the contingency.
“You don’t want to be the person running around with the proverbial chicken with their head cut off,” he said. “No, that’s our time to say, yes, we’ve mapped this out. Yes, we have a strategy in place.”
Resilience also means operating under pressure without collapse. Insurance and reinsurance professionals work with both capital and emotion - especially in the aftermath of disasters.
“We’re dealing with people in, for many of them, the worst days of their lives,” said Menendez. “We have the pressure to our stakeholders... but we also have this societal pressure of wanting to make people whole.”
That dual accountability - to both capital markets and claimants - demands a workforce that can withstand intense emotional cycles. For Menendez, the antidote is collaboration and openness.
“When you hit a setback, be open about the setback,” he said. “I bet you someone in our industry has gone through that type of situation before.”
He encourages what he calls “overwhelming force” - bringing collective expertise to tough challenges, even if the issue isn’t directly tied to your account or client. Burnout, he said, doesn’t just come from volume - it comes from isolation.
“Being a good teammate means doing two things: being open and transparent about what we're individually approaching, and then also going up to our colleagues and saying, hey, what's on your plate today?” he said.
That culture, he argued, helps prevent breakdown during annual renewals or negotiations, where the stakes are often high even before any catastrophe occurs. And when those events do hit, he offers simple but counterintuitive advice: smile.
“If you smile in the face of adversity, you'll be shocked at how resilient you actually become,” he said. “This is the job. This is the expectation. You’re in your element.”
