Our latest facultative video explores emerging trends and the current market rating environment.
The insurance market saw significant softening in 2025, with substantial rate cuts creating a challenging landscape for underwriters and brokers. Clients are now re-evaluating placements, often seeking long-term stability over aggressive rate reductions. Despite lower pricing, underwriting discipline remains strong, and a quiet year for natural catastrophes helped prevent attritional losses. While casualty rates in the UK and internationally softened, the US market continued to see increases. The industry now looks ahead to the 2026 renewal season and its anticipated challenges. Watch the full video to find out more.
FIONA KERR: It's well recognized in the insurance industry that throughout the course of 2025, we've seen the market soften. At the beginning of 2025, the market has seen large rate cuts, and this has plateaued throughout the course of the year. We are seeing out a very challenging year for underwriters and brokers alike, where rates of exchange, increased competition for placements, and the softening rates have impacted the balance sheet.
PATRICK GREEN: Clients are having to reevaluate how they approach placements. There are cases where the clients do not want to hit rock bottom and are trying to achieve long-term stability on their placements, and therefore, are opting for a more moderate rate cuts. We've seen reductions in pricing, but the underwriter discipline is still there, i.e. deductibles. And therefore, we are not seeing the creep of attritional losses. In respect of natcat, it's been a fairly benign year, and we have not seen many large cat events globally, which would expect to turn the rating environment.
