FACTBOX-Key facts about reinsurance

Sept 5 (Reuters) - Reinsurers and their insurance clients arrive in the Mediterranean resort of Monte Carlo this weekend to begin crucial pricing negotiations. [ID:nL5484395].

Following are some key facts about the industry:

* Reinsurers play a little-known but important role in the financial industry by assuming risks that are either too large or too unpredictable for their insurance clients to take on their own.

* The first reinsurance company, Cologne Re, was set up in 1846 in response to the devastating Hamburg fire of 1842, which destroyed a third of the city and killed 100 people. The blaze exposed the inadequacy of insurers to cope with such a catastrophe and prompted calls for the creation of firms that effectively insure insurers.

* The world's two largest reinsurers are Swiss Re (RUKN.VX) which was set up in 1863, and Munich Re (MUVGn.DE), which was created in 1880.

* The reinsurance industry had shareholders' capital of $264.3 billion and net written premiums of $37.9 billion at the end of the first half of 2008, according to Fitch Ratings data.

* In the past decade, reinsurers have helped insurers cope with the two largest disasters in history, one man-made and one natural, without going under.

Reinsurers paid a substantial slice of the claims from the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, which cost the insurance industry nearly $21 billion.

Reinsurers are also estimated to have paid more than half the $41 billion that Hurricane Katrina cost the insurance industry in 2005. (Reporting by Simon Challis; Editing by David Holmes)