Insurance underwriter Lancashire Holdings has announced it is renewing Accordion Insurance, its reinsurance sidecar vehicle set up to enable reinsurance contracts to be collateralised.The Bermuda-based speciality insurance provider launched Accordion last year and will renew It for another 12 months to allow Lancashire to take advantage of current retrocessional reinsurance market conditions.Flexibly capitalised for up to $250 million, Accordion is a fully-collateralised sidecar quota share reinsurance arrangement with an innovative capital draw down feature.“The renewal of the Accordian facility allows Lancashire to continue to offer property retrocessional coverage at attractive rates following the accumulation of international property catastrophe losses during 2010 and 2011 which reduced the amount of available reinsurance,” said Lancashire CEO Richard Brindle.“Supported by the Accordion capacity, Lancashire remains well positioned to take advantage of these underwriting opportunities, particularly in the event of an active US storm season,” Mr Brindle added.Lancashire’s announcement is further evidence of the opportunities available in the reinsurance right now. This is the third sidecar announcement in recent weeks. Just last week, RenaissanceRe announced their latest Timicuan Re III sidecar and Validus announced their next AlphaCat sidecar vehicle.The global reinsurance sector was strong enough to emerge from a disastrous 2011 with its capital base largely intact. That bodes well for the industry’s ability to weather another hurricane season, which has only just begun.Capital is flowing into the sector from the capital markets in the form of new start-up reinsurers, often backed by hedge funds, the formation of these new sidecars and growth of the catastrophe bond market.