SCOR

SCOR’s 2026 results offer a useful warning against treating premium growth as proof of improving capacity economics. At January renewals, estimated gross premium income grew 4.7% in traditional P&C reinsurance and 80.5% in Alternative Solutions, yet the company expected its underwriting ratio to rise by two points after pricing pressure. At April, renewed premium declined 8.7% and gross pricing fell 3.5%, with a 7.8% decline in non-proportional business driven by property catastrophe. This is active portfolio steering in practice: a reinsurer can expand where structure and return are attractive while reducing exposed business elsewhere. For MGAs, the implication is that capacity panels should be evaluated by risk appetite at the portfolio and layer level, not by groupwide solvency or a single renewal headline. SCOR’s first-half solvency ratio of 220% and €9.0 billion of economic value demonstrate substantial resources, while its second-quarter 79.5% P&C combined ratio benefited from low catastrophe activity and included additional buffer building. Those facts support financial resilience, but the renewal data show that management is still protecting margin through selection, retrocession and alternative structures. The February partnership with DUAL Brazil is instructive: SCOR paired its capital and MGA experience with local delegated underwriting across property, casualty, professional indemnity and directors-and-officers risks. Such arrangements can expand limits and speed, but only when underwriting data, claims authority and aggregation are visible across both organizations. Program leaders should therefore ask how their portfolio fits the reinsurer’s broader concentration map, what performance triggers change treaty terms and whether “alternative” capacity introduces collateral, basis or timing risks that differ from traditional reinsurance. The most durable capacity relationships make those mechanics explicit before a loss year tests them.