Kevin O’Donnell, the CEO of reinsurer and third-party reinsurance capital manager RenaissanceRe, said today that none of the firm’s investor supported joint-ventures entered 2026 any smaller than they were last year, leading to an expectation of relatively stable fee income ahead.
O’Donnell highlighted fee income earned by the RenaissanceRe Capital Partners business as one of the reinsurers key drivers of profit.
On which he said an ambition is to, “Continue to grow fees in our Capital Partners business.”
Asked later in the call about how fees are expected to run in 2026, O’Donnell said, “If it’s helpful, the joint ventures, none of them are smaller going into ‘26 than where they were in ‘25 and we haven’t changed the fee structure on any of the vehicles that we’re managing.
“So, just as a starting point, there’ll be ups and downs as new capital comes on board, or changes in the existing capital, but it’s relatively stable from last year.”
Previously during the call, RenRe’s CFO Bob Qutub commented on fee income earned in the fourth-quarter of 2025, “Fee income was $102 million and retained investment income was $314 million. Both fees and retained net investment income are among the highest we have ever reported, and demonstrate that we have continued to optimise these drivers as our underwriting portfolio has grown.”
On the full-year, Qutub explained, “Moving now to our second driver of profit, fee income, and our Capital Partners business, fees were $329 million for the year, up from 2024. Within this management fees were $207 million and performance fees were $121 million. This performance is particularly impressive given that the California wildfires suppressed fees in the first quarter. We fully recovered from this event in the first half of the year, and performance fees have surpassed our expectations for the last three quarters, due to strong underwriting results and favourable prior year development.”
Qutub further noted that, “Capital Partners produced excellent results throughout 2025. Continued strong engagement from our third-party investors and fees should remain a key driver of our financial success.”
Qutub also gave a forecast for how third-party capital fee income from the joint-ventures and ILS funds may run at the start of this year.
“Looking ahead to the first-quarter, we expect management fees to be around $50 million and performance fees to return to around $30 million, absent the impact of large catastrophe losses or favourable development,” he explained.
In Q1 2025, management fee income came in at $46 million, while performance fees were negative due to the California wildfires.
Q1 2024, meanwhile, saw third-party capital fee income reaching $83.5 million for RenaissanceRe, so the projection for Q1 2026 is relatively aligned.
However, Qutub also noted during the call that should inflows occur in the future, the fee income could rise higher, saying, “If we grow the assets significantly, the fees will follow.”
Finally, David Marra, Group Chief Underwriting Officer also highlighted that the earnings from fee income are an additional lever that helps RenaissanceRe in managing the cyclicality of reinsurance.
Marra explained that, “We share a significant part of our portfolio with Capital Partner vehicles which produces fee income which is less sensitive to rate movement.”
Also read: RenRe launches new Stratos Fund cat bond account, third-party capital fees up 31.8% in Q4.
