A Tale of Two Sureties: Navigating the Interplay Between Primary and Reinsurance Markets

Includes a Live Web Event on 12/16/2025 at 2:00 PM (EST)

Surety professionals are navigating a market defined by shifting risk appetites, evolving structures, and lessons learned from recent disruptions. Join us as presenters Brett Parmenter, Guy Carpenter and Michael Keimig, Markel, offer a timely look at the current landscape of the surety primary and reinsurance markets. We’ll examine recent results and emerging trends, highlight structural and strategic differences between primary carriers and reinsurers, and review the pandemic’s impact on the market. We’ll cover recent industry performance, notable claims, and shifts in reinsurance pricing and structure. Finally, we’ll consider how pandemic-era lessons learned may help us think about go-forward market performance expectations.

Brett Parmenter

Senior Vice President

Guy Carpenter

Brett Parmenter is a Senior Vice President in Guy Carpenter’s Minneapolis office with 20 years of insurance experience, more than half in reinsurance. He has broad commercial‑lines experience—notably in surety, property catastrophe (CAT), and high‑excess casualty—and advises clients on treaty pricing, capital modeling, and peer benchmarking. He has held leadership roles within Guy Carpenter’s Surety, and Casualty Centers of Excellence and is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society. Mr. Parmenter holds bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and physics from Illinois Wesleyan University.

Michael Keimig

President & CEO

Markel Surety

Mike joined SureTec as EVP/COO in 2014. After the acquisition by Markel in 2017, Mike became President/COO and assumed the CEO title in 2019.

Mike spent 17 years in various leadership roles with Chubb Surety - the last five as Vice President and Texas Regional Surety Manager, responsible for surety operations in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi. He started his career with Seaboard Surety in 1991 and spent three years in their Baltimore office, followed by two years in Dallas. He joined Chubb in 1997 and spent five years in the Dallas office before being named Manager of the Houston branch in 2002. In 2009, he was promoted to Vice President.

A native of Maryland, Mike graduated from Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland with a double major in Finance and Economics. Mike is the Chairman of the Surety & Fidelity Association of America (SFAA). He previously served as President of the Houston Chapter of the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA), President of the Dallas Surety Association, on the Board of the Houston Chapter of the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF) and is a past Chairman of the National Association of Independent Sureties (NAIS). Mike has also served as President of the Dads’ Club for Strake Jesuit College Preparatory (Houston) and on the Board for St. Agnes Academy (Houston).

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