Global Insurance Marketplace Insights Q3 2026 – Global Placement

JON MACDONALD: Hi there, I'm Jon MacDonald. I work in Willis' Placement function. I'm here with my esteemed colleague this morning, Jason Mills, who's Head of Placement for GB and Global Specialty. Jason, good morning.

JASON MILLS: Good morning, John, esteemed. Thanks. That's very kind of you, Jon.

JON MACDONALD: Brilliant so let's start with the market itself. So what are you seeing on broking capacity?

JASON MILLS: Yes, it's a great place to start, Johnny. The world continues to be good news for clients in that respect. The underlying fundamentals remain healthy. There's been seemingly an abundance of capacity. Both insurers and reinsurers are producing strong results. Great combined ratios. And this is leading to increased appetite, competition, and innovation within the market. And we'll touch on some of that in the coming minutes.

Yeah, that said, I think it's important to say there are one or two markets starting to suggest that the rate adequacy is getting a bit thin. That is a difference to where we were maybe a quarter ago, and certainly something to worth watching as that rate adequacy disappears or dissipates. We may see change in appetite from some of the insurers. But there is nothing to suggest overall that that's going to change any time soon.

JON MACDONALD: Great news for clients on price there. But what else are we seeing in the London market? In the soft market, are we still seeing insurers and brokers innovating and differentiating themselves?

JASON MILLS: Yeah, for sure. I mean, we're in a great time of change at the moment. And with that appetite holding up, broadly speaking, and this is really helping to drive innovation. And what I mean by that is it's not just on price, it's how risks are getting placed, not just what the premiums are. We see new facilities from the insurers with appetite to write those.

We've seen new products. There's a couple of examples that we've seen from a Willis perspective around what we've been doing with our nuclear facility or some of our carbon capture products, just to name a couple. And it's impacting our placement strategies. London as a market continues to be a hotbed of innovation and activity around that. It's a natural home for innovation, for complex risks, for cross border, hard to place business.

But also, with the proliferation of AI and the ability to digest SOVs and data digitally, we can match appetite quickly as well. And that's leading to an increase in fast follow capabilities, algo (algorithmic) capabilities. We have a number of those within our business across our specialties. But our largest and most high profile of those is our Gemini, our global solution, which is our fast follow facility, which we could probably dive a little bit more into.

JON MACDONALD: So Gemini then, so we've heard a lot about it, I imagine both internally and externally, is it's about to turn one. How's it all going?

JASON MILLS: Yeah, it's one years old. Yeah, happy birthday, Gemini. So yeah, it's good. It's had a great first year. Actually, we should be really proud of what we've able to achieve with the launch of Gemini and how far it's come within that year. It's our proprietary fast follow facility. It's now up to 16%. There's great appetite from carriers to look into to joining that panel as and when the time is right for that. That's not going to change any time soon.

But with the guaranteed capacity that it brings, the certainty can bring to carriers is clearly resonating well, because we can see that from the fact that the indexation, the take up rate has been extremely high. I mean, it's not just writing the hard to write business at all, it indexes across our whole portfolio.

But nonetheless, some of the trickier areas that we see in recent months, maybe around some of the PVT, political violence and terror risks, obviously, some war, things like space or maybe pockets of US casualty, Gemini bringing great value to our clients in that space. But in reality, the value is beyond just writing the trick here, not just the fact that it has a discount on it. It's the certainty. It's the claims efficiency. And it's the stability that it brings to the market.

So yeah, look, it's tracking really well in year one. It's exciting to see where it's going to go. And actually, there is more happening. We've just recently launched, in the start of the second half of the year, we've just launched it in. It's now gone live in the DIFC, in the Middle East, in Dubai, and also in Singapore. So its global reach really is becoming global now.

JON MACDONALD: Thanks for that. Clearly, Gemini and the other big facilities that you've talked about there are reliant on tech. At the end of July, Willis made a major announcement on a propel initiative, which is a big group investment into AI. Where do you think tech is heading in specialty, Jason?

JASON MILLS: Propel is a great piece of news. I mean, that's a very significant investment from Willis into the tech and operational space. So it's fantastic that we have that support going behind this very exciting time in the market, where tech is becoming extremely important and extremely relevant. I don't think it's tech alone. It's tech plus broking and operations. It's the experience of bringing all of those together which is going to make a real difference.

Some examples of that could be some of the work we're doing around using technology to algorithmic appetite matching, which we have a couple of very exciting projects, which you'll hear more about in the second half of the year, triaging risks, digital digestion, fast turnaround, differentiated pricing, and the technology and the investment that we've made into that technology is allowing us to get to that quicker and make it scalable, which is really interesting.

So it's not just in individual pockets. What we see works in one business we can replicate in others, which is really exciting. You have seen and maybe heard in the media a lot about our Aquarius project. Aquarius is our global S part of SME, low touch, no touch panel solution, which we're rolling out globally. Again, there's a lot of tech and operational capabilities, that all driven with a client-centric lens.

It's about speed. It's about efficiency. It's about quality of coverage, quality of market, documentation, invoicing, accuracy. So it creates a vastly improved client experience. But it actually makes us more efficient too internally, which allows us to get away from rework and laborious corrections and gets us to focus on better client outcomes and better service delivery.

There's also a secondary and very important benefit that comes out of these changes, which is the enhanced and improved data and analytics that we get from that, which is helpful for us, from me personally in my placement role, to be able to face off against markets and have more informed discussions, but really important for our clients because they're getting to see and feel rate movements, changes, trends globally, regionally, by industry.

And this enriched data creates a far more enhanced client conversation for our account execs and our colleagues. So client centricity at the forefront of what we're doing.

JON MACDONALD: I certainly agree with you that it's not just tech on its own. You've got to combine all those other elements to make something.

JASON MILLS: Yeah, exactly.

JON MACDONALD: So just the last one then. So is there anything else on your mind? Anything else you want to share with us?

JASON MILLS: Yeah, I mean, there's just so much going on. We're not going to cover it all here, clearly. But I mean, I think two things I'd love to just get out there, maybe something for future conversations. We've got a really exciting initiative going on around our four identified super industries. We have many, many industry sectors, but these are the four I thought we'd brand as super industries, and they're global value propositions, which Willis is working on for clients in that space.

Defense and security, I think well documented how much additional spend there is in that space, there's definitely a growth area. Sports is another one that we've identified with a broad-reaching need across specialties. Electrification, clearly, as we move away from decarbonizing into the power of renewables space, small modular reactors, some of those exposures, which we're doing for electrification perspective. And digital infrastructure is another one that we're bringing in.

Digital infrastructure, I mean, you see a lot in the media about data centers. We're looking at it from a digital infrastructure perspective. It's kind of a hyperscaler industry with huge potential. It's riddled with complexity. And that's where our specialty business and the complexity comes together so beautifully. You look at digital infrastructure, we're not just talking about the construction and then the ongoing property risks surrounding data centers.

We're talking about construction, property, casualty, risk modeling, the financial lines exposures of professional indemnity, cyber, D&O, crime, the surety support that can be given in the loans in the banking sector to support the lending that is required to build these very expensive, vast hyperscaler digital infrastructure projects, the PVT, political violence and terrorism risk that supports that, and indeed, the power risks from the energy that's needed to power these units.

So as you can see, it's a really great one for our global specialties business, and how we interact with our markets to bring cross specialty solutions in that industry space. And that's same for the other three as well. And by the way, it's not just traditional risk transfer, we're focused very clearly on some of the solutions which can come out from the ART or captives or indeed around parametric. So, nicely complicated. We're well positioned. In fact, we think we're at the forefront of the solutions for our clients in those industry spaces. So exciting times ahead on that.

And I think the other one, which I would be remiss of me not to mention is some of the great work we're seeing from our claims team, our global claims team, Neil Harrison and his group, some really exciting thought leadership from Willis coming in that claims offering, such an important part of what we deliver for our clients, of course. And placement and claims are completely lockstep.

The markets that we work with, the feedback that we give them, and how we're driving and change in that space, which I know is resonating well with clients because I've seen them turn to us and say, thank you for looking at this through this lens because it was a real differentiator is helping us win business. But what we're really seeking there is clear resolutions, faster outcomes, the right expert representation at the right time in the loss cycle of a claim, and then using placement for smarter escalation into the businesses.

So what we're doing in claims, I think as well, is from a client-centric perspective is really exciting what we're seeing from Willis. So those are the other two points, which I think worth tabling, and maybe we can do a little bit more in the future.

JON MACDONALD: So last one from me. You're a busy man. Is there anything else on your mind?

JASON MILLS: Yeah, lots of stuff going on around the business. I think to home in on would be, one, the Willis super industries, the four identified super industries. Yeah, we have industry verticals in a number of our 13, 14, 15 industry verticals. But the super industries we've identified are defense and security, sports, electrification, and digital infrastructure.

JON MACDONALD: Brilliant Thanks, Jason.

JASON MILLS: Yeah, thanks, Johnny. Great to spend some time with you. Thanks a lot.

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