Excess and surplus (E&S) insurance is no longer a temporary pressure valve for hard-to-place risks in the high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) market.
Instead, it has become a structural pillar of complex personal insurance programs, particularly as capacity constraints, catastrophe losses, and liability pressures reshape the landscape, according to specialists from Brown & Brown.
Caitlin Rascelles (pictured on the right) and Jeff Clinkscales (pictured on the left) said E&S is now embedded in how brokers design and negotiate HNW portfolios, especially in catastrophe-exposed regions and for accounts requiring substantial excess limits.
“In the West, almost every complex account we are looking at has an E&S or multiple E&S components,” said Clinkscales, SVP, Private Client Services Leader for the West Region at Risk Strategies, part of Brown & Brown. “We do not see admitted markets being able to fill that gap in a meaningful amount of time.”
While E&S was once viewed as a short-term bridge during hard cycles, both executives believe its expanded role is here to stay.
The capacity required to insure large, geographically diverse family office portfolios (often with significant catastrophe aggregation) has outpaced what admitted carriers can comfortably deploy under tightened underwriting standards.
The result is a permanent recalibration. Admitted carriers remain disciplined, particularly in wildfire-exposed regions, while E&S markets provide the flexibility and capacity needed to complete placements.
“The high‑net‑worth carriers all have flexibility and their own version of an E&S product. They have invested heavily in E&S underwriting talent,” noted Rascelles, national personal lines leader, Brown & Brown. “I think it will be a meaningful part of a risk portfolio going forward in how we manage our customers.”
For HNW clients accustomed to tailored coverage, E&S also offers a negotiation point.
Rascelles explained: “A client may say, ‘I really like my wood shake roof. I do not want to change it. I am willing to pay more and go into the E&S market.’ That is a conversation we can have and leverage.”
Conversations around balancing mitigation expectations, pricing trade-offs, and market choice is increasingly common, she noted. E&S provides an option for clients who are unwilling or unable to meet admitted carriers’ mitigation thresholds, while admitted markets may reward more aggressive risk controls with improved terms.
“The carriers understand that high net worth, ultra-high net worth, and family office customers have come to expect that flexibility,” Rascelles added. “They do not always want to be dictated to about what they have to do. E&S provides healthy competition among carriers and gives customers better leverage in how they want to manage their entire portfolio.”
Wildfire risk in the West has been a key catalyst for this shift. Underwriting scrutiny is more granular than ever, the Brown & Brown executives said, with carriers evaluating risks at a micro level and carefully managing where they “burn” capacity.
At the same time, catastrophe exposure is no longer limited to coastal or wildfire-prone states. Severe convective storms across the central US have driven multi-billion-dollar weather losses in the personal lines space, reinforcing underwriting discipline nationwide.
“(Carriers’) process and the lines of questioning are much more robust than they have ever been,” said Clinkscales. “Everything is being underwritten on a much more micro level than at any point in my career.”
However, after years of rate increases and portfolio remediation, many HNW carriers are pivoting back to measured growth outside of the most distressed regions. New capacity has entered areas such as the Southeast, where competition is increasing.
Clinkscales stressed that risk mitigation remains table stakes for preferred terms, whether in admitted or E&S placements. Carriers want evidence of hardened roofs, defensible space, water leak detection, and proactive property management, especially for multi-state or international family office portfolios. Brokers, in turn, are required to perform more robust frontline underwriting before approaching markets.
“We are always anticipating innumerable questions from underwriters, particularly if we are asking for significant capacity. Our internal processes and lines of questioning have had to adapt to anticipate that process,” said Clinscales. “It stretches the process and changes the expectations we set for clients, family offices, and their advisors as we procure coverage.”
The expansion of E&S is not limited to property. Umbrella and excess liability, already pressured by third-party litigation funding and nuclear verdicts, remain constrained. Rascelles noted a “push and pull between the limits customers need and the limits carriers are willing to put out.”
Stacked umbrella programs, often incorporating surplus lines layers, have become standard for UHNW clients seeking significant limits. Packaging underlying auto and umbrella with aligned carriers is critical, particularly when large losses could exhaust primary limits and trigger excess layers. E&S plays a vital role in building towers where admitted markets alone cannot meet demand.
In this backdrop, carriers want a deep understanding of lifestyle exposures, public profile, and auto risk management before deploying capacity. “What is most important is that we, as brokers, can paint a picture for carriers of who our customer is, why they care about those exposures, and what they are doing to help mitigate any type of loss activity,” said Rascelles.
Will E&S recede once capacity stabilizes fully? Rascelles and Clinkscales agree that the shift appears structural. “There is too much capacity required in the marketplace for admitted markets to get comfortable fast enough to profitably write that business,” Clinkscales pointed out.
Clients, too, are more comfortable with E&S than in previous cycles. As long as brokers vet carrier financial strength and claims reliability (particularly when new entrants expand into high-value regions), surplus lines solutions are increasingly viewed as part of a sophisticated, diversified risk strategy.
