In a softening cycle, the market’s first visible shift is often behavioural rather than technical: more renewals go back out, more price checks are run and more quotes are gathered in shorter timeframes. That activity can be read as competition working as intended. But two underwriters interviewed at UAC’s Sydney event suggested the volume itself is becoming a defining feature of the cycle and one creating its own distortions for brokers in both Australia and New Zealand.
Jodie Drinnan (pictured left with colleague), general manager and underwriter at Marine Bind, described a market where pricing differences are increasingly pronounced, particularly when smaller specialist underwriters are set against larger carriers.
“We’ve got to protect our binders, so it should be binder first,” she said.
In practical terms, binder-backed capacity is governed by parameters and performance expectations that can limit how far price can move, regardless of how aggressively competitors pursue volume.
In that environment, Drinnan said the surprise is not that some competitors can “beat” a price, but that broker customers seeking that comparison often assume every market is playing the same game.
Large insurers, she said, can have greater capacity to absorb volatility across a diversified group, while smaller businesses have fewer places to hide underperformance. The effect, for brokers, is a more complex renewal conversation: price can be the headline, but the underwriting context - risk appetite, claims expectations and the sustainability of terms - often determines whether the saving is durable.
What has changed, Drinnan suggested, is not only where the price lands but how frequently the market is being tested. Marine Bind’s online model is built for transactional risks and can generate auto-quotes when submissions sit within set parameters. Yet in a remarketing-heavy cycle, fast quoting can also be drawn into administrative processes that are less about placement strategy than documentation.
“Sometimes I think we’re like a report filler, because they just want to put in their report that they’ve got three quotes and go from that,” she said.
The compliance and governance architecture around placements - and the need to keep customers happy - can, at times, drive quote collection even when it may not be in anyone’s best interests. For underwriters, that can mean resources spent on submissions that never become live opportunities; for brokers, it can mean less time available for the risks that genuinely need underwriting attention.
If Drinnan’s comments focus on the volume and mechanics of remarketing, Alan Brett (pictured right), commercial underwriting director at Australasia Underwriting (AUPL), described the pressure point that tends to surface when competition sharpens: the quality of risk information and the premium base that ultimately supports claims.
“Information exchange is still the biggest thing for us,” said Brett. AUPL, he said, is a business focused on more complicated risks where risk management detail and a shared understanding of exposures shape both terms and pricing. In softening conditions there can be a perception that extensive risk detail matters less because more markets are prepared to quote. His view was that competitive markets can make the opposite true — particularly for complex risks where small misunderstandings can translate into significant coverage disputes when claims arise.
Alongside submissions, Brett pointed to the underwriting arithmetic that sits behind the cycle. “You’ve still got to generate that earned premium to pay the claims,” he said.
In a softening market, he argued, premium erosion can weaken the ability to maintain the premium pool that supports claims-paying obligations. So that brings a counter pressure to bring in more business that only drives premiums lower. He said that pressure is visible among his firm’s Lloyd’s capacity providers in London.
The relationship between information and premium can help explain why underwriters can appear simultaneously more competitive and more demanding. As pricing compresses, the margin for uncertainty shrinks. Underwriters may push harder for detail, not as a procedural hurdle, but as a way to avoid under-pricing and to protect portfolio performance when the cycle turns.
Neither underwriter framed the current phase as unusual; cycles are a feature of insurance. What stood out, from interviews conducted at UAC’s Sydney gathering, was the way softening conditions are concentrating friction in areas important to brokers through the sheer intensity of remarketing and the likely growing gap between premium prices and future claims costs.
