Willis Direct & Facultative (D&F) has added Dubai and Madrid to its global property & casualty (P&C) placement hub network, expanding its reach in the Middle East and continental Europe as property and casualty markets continue to diverge across regions. The new hubs are part of Willis’s global D&F model, which the firm describes as operating as a single team that can connect clients to more than 400 insurance markets through local, wholesale, and facultative channels. The wholesale hub network now includes London, Madrid, Bermuda, Miami, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, with local facultative hubs in all major regions.
Garret Gaughan, global head of D&F at Willis, said clients are rethinking how they access capacity. “We’re delighted to announce the addition of two further global hubs. We recognise that clients are increasingly seeking to complement traditional market access with the competitive advantages offered by emerging and established international marketplaces. Madrid naturally strengthens our connectivity with Latin America, while Dubai enhances our reach across the broader Middle East region.” Gaughan said. He added that by “deepening our global footprint and strengthening cross market collaboration, we ensure clients benefit from the most competitive, future-focused solutions available, wherever they are in the world.”
Willis is positioning Dubai as a central point for its D&F P&C capabilities in the CEEMEA region, with the hub intended to support access to regional and international capacity for risks sourced from the Gulf and surrounding markets. Eleni Lykoudi, head of CEEMEA, said the initiative is aimed at aligning with client needs in the region. “We are delighted to announce the new D&F property and casualty offering in Dubai. This reflects our commitment to strengthening our regional presence, enhancing service capabilities for our clients, and supporting long-term growth. This matches the extensive opportunity we see across the CEEMEA region,” Lykoudi said.
In Spain, Madrid is being built out as an international hub linking Spanish and Latin American insurers and buyers with the wider global market. According to Ivan Sainz, head of Spain, the hub is meant to transfer experience between territories. “The expansion of the global hub in Madrid enables us to further support clients by drawing on insight and experience from across industries and geographies. Applying lessons learned in one market to challenges emerging in another strengthens our ability to respond to complex and evolving risk needs. This reflects the significance of the Madrid and broader Spanish marketplace and how it will be a critical international access point of the future,” Sainz said. For insurance professionals, the larger network allows more placements to be coordinated through hub teams that connect local distribution, facultative support, and wholesale capacity, with potential implications for how multinational and complex programs are structured, layered, and marketed.
The hub expansion coincides with WTW’s latest global P&C update, which highlights contrasting conditions between casualty and property, particularly in North America. On the casualty side, Kirsten Monaghan, North America casualty, London, said the market remains hard, with rates still increasing and insurers careful about how they deploy capacity and manage aggregations. New entrants have provided additional capacity, including one anticipated in Bermuda, but Monaghan said this has not significantly shifted overall pricing. She linked the environment to long‑tail exposures and trends in claims costs. Medical and legal expenses are rising, and loss developments are moving higher. Social inflation, larger jury awards, an active plaintiff bar, and the use of litigation funding are contributing to more frequent “nuclear” and “thermonuclear” verdicts, especially in US auto, construction, and manufacturing. After several consecutive years of casualty rate increases, many buyers are reassessing how they manage their total cost of risk. Monaghan said brokers and clients are using structures such as quota share retentions, swing plans, captive participation, buffer layers, and first loss corridors to address inflation in loss frequency and severity.
By contrast, the North American property market is in a softening phase. Alisha Bhundia, North America property, London, said “currently in the North American property space, we’re seeing the market continue to soften, and rates are coming off faster than we anticipated.” A lack of recent large catastrophe events has enabled many insureds to achieve premium reductions, even as brokers track tropical systems and other perils. Bhundia and colleague Poppy Legge noted that carriers are responding to competition by offering longer stretches and larger lines on new and renewal business. They said day‑to‑day collaboration with data and analytics teams, including catastrophe modelling, exposure monitoring, and location intelligence, has become standard practice in program design and in demonstrating risk characteristics to underwriters.
In Europe, WTW specialists report that property markets continue to ease, with competitive pressure and available capacity pushing down rates and allowing more flexibility around terms and conditions. In some cases, limits removed in the hard market are being reconsidered. Even so, carriers remain focused on exposures that can add volatility to portfolios. Victor de Jager, head of property, Europe, cited natural catastrophes, supply chain disruption, political risk, and tariffs as ongoing considerations in underwriting and capacity allocation. De Jager said the softer environment gives buyers scope to negotiate coverage changes but that insurers still expect insureds to demonstrate risk management practices, provide credible data, and explain their risk approach to the market.
Natural catastrophe risk continues to be a priority across portfolios. Katherine Latham, natural catastrophe analytics manager, said that for risk managers, “maintaining and sharing a complete and accurate picture of their exposure within their portfolio” is now central to both placement and pricing discussions. She highlighted the role of detailed address‑level data, values, construction, and occupancy information, which are inputs for catastrophe models and risk scores that can reveal loss drivers and potential mitigation options.
International property markets outside Europe show similar trends. Rory Hardingham, international property, London, said overall rates are moving down, with larger and more complex risks generally seeing greater reductions than small and midsize accounts because of minimum premium constraints. He pointed to Hurricane Melissa, which recently passed through the Caribbean and is estimated to generate US$3 billion to US$5 billion in insured losses, as an event that will affect individual carriers and reinsurers but is not expected, on its own, to reverse global pricing. The full effect, he said, will be clearer after treaty reinsurance renewals.
Outside the US, international and European casualty markets are generally described as favourable to buyers. Kiran Nayee, head of casualty, Europe, said insurers are competing for business as they seek growth in a line that has produced stable technical outcomes in several territories. Nayee said “we’re seeing significant rate declines as insurers compete strongly,” although insurers remain cautious around material US exposures, noncore coverage extensions, and emerging risks such as PFAS and artificial intelligence. He said the current conditions give insureds an opportunity to revisit program design, including limits, retentions, and coverage features, and to weigh options across domestic and international markets, including facilities and facultative placements.
Thomas Wright and Jack Ledger said many clients are moving from a narrow focus on pricing to a broader review of whether structures still match their risk profile and supply chain complexity. This has prompted greater use of data and analytics to design more tailored programs, rather than relying solely on benchmarking against peers. Wright added that as capacity becomes easier to secure, service is gaining weight in insurer selection. Insurers are using updates to policy wording, broader cover options, and more explicit service commitments to differentiate themselves, while buyers pay closer attention to responsiveness and claims performance as part of their evaluation.
WTW’s update places data and analytics at the centre of how risks are presented, priced, and transferred across property and casualty. James Gillespie, head of D&F data & analytics, said detailed exposure and loss information can help avoid market assumptions that may not reflect an individual client’s risk. Analytics teams are modelling loss frequency and severity to inform decisions on retentions, limits, and alternative structures in the current rating environment.
In product recall, Ledger said limited historical loss data has led to the development of industry‑specific models to quantify exposure, assess whether limits and retentions remain appropriate, and incorporate cost changes in labour, energy, and raw materials. He said these outputs support both budgeting and long‑term program planning. Nayee summarised the shift in buyer strategy as using data to “be a seller of risk as opposed to a buyer of insurance,” by presenting structured and consistent information that can create focused competition among carriers. For insurance professionals, Willis’s expansion of its D&F hubs in Dubai and Madrid sits within this broader backdrop. The firm is seeking to link global market access, regional hubs, and analytical support to handle P&C placements, as buyers reassess program structures and capital deployment in an environment of softening property rates, ongoing casualty pressures, and continued attention to catastrophe and emerging risks.
