Earlier this year, Marsh’s ‘Global Insurance Market Index’ revealed a third consecutive quarterly decline in global commercial insurance rates – which dropped by an average of 3% in Q1 2025. Broken down both geographically and by business line, the latest figures continue a trend that began in early 2021, reversing nearly seven years of rising rates.
Speaking with Insurance Business ahead of the upcoming AIRMIC Conference 2025 and in her recently announced new role as UK & Ireland CEO of Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, Nina Arquint (pictured), highlighted that the UK market, in particular, has seen a drop in rates across several lines. “We’re coming from a hard market environment so it has overall been a solid market but one you can now see softening across different lines of business. With that, very naturally you see a decline in the risk-adjusted rates.”
Arquint noted that it’s essential to see this trend in the wider context of an increasingly complex and interconnected risk environment. There’s a number of key themes that are front of mind for risk managers today, she said, among them climate and environmental risk, with businesses in the UK and beyond facing increasingly severe and frequent weather events. The latest Swiss Re sigma report projected that insured natural catastrophes are on trend to hit US$145 billion in 2025, largely driven by secondary perils such as severe convective storms, floods and wildfires.
Geopolitical instability and its knock-on impact on supply chains are also front-of-mind considerations, she said, while the impact that technology will have on clients’ businesses is a continuous conversation that Swiss Re Corporate Solutions is having with clients and brokers alike.
Framing commercial insurance pricing conversations against what’s happening in the wider external environment gives greater insight into how pricing trends will evolve going forward. “It is a very competitive market out there, and I think competition as such is not a bad thing, it keeps you on your toes and it keeps driving innovation,” she said. “But it’s also really important, as an insurance industry, that we are very aware of the dynamic risk landscape we're facing. And we should make sure that on the risk-adjusted basis, the rate environment stays healthy and resilient.”
The industry needs to really use and leverage the insights gleaned from previous market cycles in order to continue to be a credible and reliable player, she said, as that’s how you create a healthy and sustainable insurance market.
With that in mind, Arquint examined what’s happening with commercial insurance rates across the UK, noting that there’s still variance from business line to business line. “On the casualty side, particularly for the non-US casualty business, competition is high,” she said. “But we play mainly in the primary lead space, where partnering closely with the clients changes the dynamic at play.” Meanwhile, financial and professional lines rates decreased by 6% globally, declining in every region, including by 10% in the UK.
However, she emphasised that the big change in the last 9-12 months has been the rate decreases registered across property. Property rates declined 6% in the UK over Q1 2025, directly in keeping with the overall global decrease of 6%, though slightly less in the segments of the market served by Swiss Re Corporate Solutions.
Arquint shared that clients are quick to question why rates are fluctuating so much, in particular on the property side. “I get that question quite often,” she said. “On the one hand, we talk about clients’ climate and environmental risk but in light of the expected $145 billion in insured nat cat losses in 2025, how can it be that rates are coming down in property? I think this is being driven by competition to some extent because that’s how a marketplace works. But I think also for our clients, they’re looking for a certain consistency in the pricing approach, but also transparency behind pricing.”
That transparency encompasses a range of considerations, she said, among them what comprises expected losses – how much is attritional and how much is made up of large losses? Clients want to know how a premium comes together, and what factors are considered in setting a rate. These corporates also have a keen desire and a clear mandate to deliver consistent returns, and a core part of that is having certain stability and consistency when it comes to their insurance premiums.
That’s driving many of the conversations Arquint and her team are having with brokers and clients alike today, and it’s also a key driver behind increasing demand for alternative risk transfer (ART) vehicles – which is encouraging more holistic conversations about risks and how to finance them. Captives are a strong example of this, but it’s important to add that the development of these solutions is not in response to price fluctuations but rather the changing conversation about how risk management can work hand-in-hand with risk transfer to support clients’ overarching strategic ambitions and expectations for returns.
Looking to the future, Arquint said the key for her and her team is to deliver on the needs of multinational companies and to stay vigilant on pricing and market conditions. This will be supported by her efforts to deepen her team’s local market presence in the UK and Ireland, which will see them work closely with brokers and clients alike to understand the support required to navigate current market conditions.
Meanwhile, advancements in the team’s data and technology capabilities will be integral to providing smarter risk insights and enhancing decision-making for customers, she said. This will include significant investment into its International Programs business as so many businesses are now multinational or international, and it’s up to their insurance partners to make sure they’re providing the right support - whether that’s investing in new products and services, or in continuing to build a resilient and forward-thinking team with the right expertise to advise and guide them.
As to where the commercial insurance pricing landscape goes next, she said: “The rates are increasingly volatile and the global risk environment is interconnected. So, when I look at the risk landscape and the pricing cycle, I don’t think we will see any significant deterioration in some of these lines of business, because it would, in my view, not be justified from that risk perspective. But we will see.”
