Development Status of Catastrophe Reinsurance Market in China

At present, there are 9 reinsurance companies in China, including 3 Chinese-funded companies, namely China Life Insurance Co., Ltd., China Property Reinsurance Co., Ltd., Taiping Reinsurance Co., Ltd. Beijing Branch (formerly China International Reinsurance Co., Ltd. Beijing Branch) and 6 foreign-funded reinsurance companies. They are Swiss Reinsurance Co., Ltd. Beijing Branch (incorporated on September 27th, 2003), Munich Reinsurance Company Beijing Branch (incorporated on September 5th, 2003), Cologne Reinsurance Company Shanghai Branch (incorporated on July 30th, 2004) and Lloyd Reinsurance (China) Co., Ltd. (incorporated on March 5th, 2007). There are two branches in Beijing and Shanghai), French reinsurance company Beijing branch (incorporated on February 3, 2008) and Hanover Reinsurance Co., Ltd. Shanghai branch (May 6544). The reinsurance market in China is still developing slowly and facing many problems. Insurance and reinsurance supervision is not in place, which easily leads to the high price and low risk transfer of catastrophe insurance. There is no special reinsurance law in China, and its supervision is mainly based on several principles stipulated in the insurance law, such as retained premium income, retained amount of dangerous units, domestic priority reinsurance and so on. Generally speaking, the existing reinsurance laws and regulations in China mainly focus on the provisions of reinsurance business, but have no provisions on the management of reinsurance organizations. Lack of independent reinsurance legislation, imperfect provisions on reinsurance system, there is a big gap with international reinsurance legislation. This may also be due to the insufficient number of subjects in the reinsurance market, unclear reinsurance ideas and low reinsurance business volume.