Marsh report on insurance renewal pricing
Two separate recent industry experts' reports make for very encouraging reading as they both confirm that the momentum of price rises in the insurance market continues.
Marsh the global broker has this table (click here to see the report and chart) to illustrate price rises in all classes of business across all regions up to the end of 2019:
| Dec 2017 | +1.1% |
| March 2018 | +1.1% |
| June 2018 | +1.5% |
| Sept 2018 | +1.7% |
| Dec 2018 | +2.4% |
| March 2019 | +3.3% |
| June 2019 | +6.3% |
| Sept 2019 | +8.3% |
| Dec 2019 | +10.6% |
This shows that price rises have now been ongoing for nine quarters and as we are hearing elsewhere have stepped up considerably recently. According to Marsh, the classes of business that particularly increased were US property where catastrophe exposure and and casualty (D&O for example) where poor results are weighing upon insurers’ attitude to renewals: US property risks increased 18% alone, casualty following with 15% increases. The UK has also seen significant increases of nearly +14% with the casualty classes (Professional Indemnity for example) by nearly 28%.
Another firm that monitors prices called IVANs (click here) produces a monthly index of renewals pricing which shows that the broad trend of increases (unsurprisingly) continued into 2020 with nearly all lines of business experiencing increases in their renewals, commercial property at nearly 5% in January’s renewals.
Hampden Underwriting Research will produce its considered view about the market in due course to all Members.