The 1 January 2026, renewal was a period of choice, change and opportunity for cedants. The headline story was pricing. Plentiful capacity, driven in large part by attractive returns through 2025, and modest growth in demand led to significant rate reductions across much of the market.
Structural changes and improvements were more nuanced, as many buyers sought to focus on "down pricing" rather than "up risking", i.e. seeking to maximize savings rather than push more risk into the reinsurance market. There were exceptions, with successful outcomes for some clients who sought and achieved a rational trade-off between enhanced coverage and price.
We are now in a market with not only record levels of capital but a motivation to deploy it. Cedants were broadly able to secure significant, double-digit risk-adjusted rate reductions in property lines, while as ever, individual client outcomes reflected their circumstances, rate reductions were broadly achieved across specialty, cyber and international casualty markets.
We explore key drivers and major themes by line of business in the rest of the report. But some highlights include:
- Property: Renewals favored buyers, with cedants gaining more choice in program terms and structures. While buyers' focus was largely on price, there were signs of some ability to reclaim additional frequency protection
- Casualty: Continued concerns over elevated loss trends and loss development in the US dominated discussions on casualty renewals. In addition, there have been fundamental shifts in casualty underwriting and performance dynamics which continue to obscure the view of profitability
- Specialty: Oversupply of capital drove competition and broader coverage, with loss free programs seeing significant rate reductions, though negotiations remained complex
In summary
The 1.1.26 renewal represented further price reduction and structural flexibility. In many parts of the market the dynamics of price discovery and structural alignment led to a delay in the renewal process itself, as cedants were content to wait in pursuit of better prices, terms and/or structure.
As brokers, working with our clients to tailor their reinsurance buying strategies at a moment of abundant capacity across all lines of business, is our top priority for the year ahead. There are plenty of options and opportunities to improve reinsurance coverage and we intend to explore all of them.