In September 2026, Howden Re announced a new International Alternative Solutions practice led by Alexander Roth to develop risk and capital structures for clients across Europe, Asia and other international markets.
The practice combines structured reinsurance, climate science, data analytics, product design, portfolio structuring, pricing, capital-markets access and placement. Peter Steiner and Kanika Anand have moved from Howden’s Climate Risk and Resilience practice to establish a dedicated parametric capability within the international reinsurance business.
The organisation reflects growing demand for solutions that sit between traditional insurance, reinsurance and capital markets. Clients face physical exposures that are difficult to model, financial risks that do not fit standard policy triggers and capacity constraints in conventional markets. A multidisciplinary team can design structures around the underlying economic loss rather than begin with an existing product.
Alternative Solutions Cover Different Problems
Structured reinsurance can smooth earnings, protect capital or manage adverse development through multi-year and loss-sensitive arrangements. Parametric insurance pays when an independently measured event crosses an agreed threshold, which can provide rapid liquidity but may create basis risk when the payment differs from the client’s actual loss. Capital-markets solutions can bring additional capacity and diversify counterparties.
The value of combining these capabilities lies in choosing the right instrument. A climate exposure may require physical modelling, a parametric trigger and reinsurance capacity. A portfolio with volatile development may need a structured treaty. A public-sector client may prioritise fast liquidity following a disaster rather than full indemnification of every loss.
The approach also requires disciplined governance. Complex structures can obscure cost, counterparty exposure and trigger behaviour. Clients should test the solution under several scenarios, compare it with conventional cover and identify which losses remain uninsured. Parametric products need transparent data sources, calculation agents and dispute procedures.
Employee Benefits Could Be a Future Application
Alternative risk transfer is less established in employee benefits than in property and catastrophe lines, but several use cases are plausible. A multinational employer may seek aggregate protection against exceptional medical trend, pandemic-related mortality, concentration in a country or disruption to local insurance capacity. A captive could retain predictable risk and purchase structured protection above a defined corridor.
Parametric triggers may also support benefits linked to climate or public-health events. Extreme heat, air pollution or epidemic indicators could trigger funding for temporary benefits, employee assistance or operational measures. The challenge is to design a trigger that correlates closely with employee need and complies with insurance and employment rules.
Global benefits networks have an advantage because they already aggregate local data and insurer relationships. If data quality improves, they could help model multinational accumulations and connect local policies with captive or reinsurance protection. They would need to demonstrate that the arrangement complements, rather than circumvents, employee entitlements and local regulation.
Data quality remains a threshold issue. Employee benefits claims are often held in different formats, subject to privacy constraints and reported with long delays. Before structuring protection, the client and broker need consistent exposure definitions, credible historical experience and rules for adjusting the portfolio when countries or benefits change. Weak data can create pricing uncertainty and basis risk.
The economics also need to be transparent. Clients should separate brokerage, modelling, capacity and administration costs, then compare the total with traditional insurance and retained risk. A complex structure is justified only if it improves protection, capital efficiency or access to capacity after all costs and constraints are considered.
Howden Re’s new practice is therefore worth watching beyond the immediate property and climate market. It signals that brokers are organising around client problems and sources of capital rather than product silos. Employee benefits may become part of that convergence as medical, mortality, climate and geopolitical risks interact more visibly.
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