Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

Post-Ian Property Rate Gains Are Nearly Gone as Capital Keeps Arriving - Insurance Pricing Turns - Week of September 28 to October 4, 2026

A synthesis of what insurance and reinsurance podcasts and executives said for the week of September 28 to October 4, 2026, built around Westfield Specialty's Jack Kuhn saying the property rate gains won after Hurricane Ian have almost all been given back, Verisk's Rob Newbold warning the industry should expect a $171 billion average catastrophe year, and a Lloyd's panel explaining why outside capital keeps arriving through the London Bridge platform.

Insurance Pricing Turns

Week of September 28 to October 4, 2026: Post-Ian Property Rate Gains Are Nearly Gone as Capital Keeps Arriving

The Monte Carlo podcast wave is winding down. After last week's run of eight episodes, this week brought three. The three still fit together. An underwriter with 40 years in the business said the property price gains won after Hurricane Ian are almost all gone and that he is happy to write less. A catastrophe modeller reminded everyone what a normal bad year costs. And a Lloyd's panel explained why outside investors keep arriving anyway.

TL;DR

  • The property price rise after Hurricane Ian has been almost fully given back, says one specialty insurer, and it is shrinking on purpose. Jack Kuhn, president of Westfield Specialty (about $2.4 billion of premium a year): "we probably have given back almost all of the rate that we initially got from that through last year and this year." Westfield will "write less than we wrote last year" in property and is "significantly off our plan number... But I'm OK with that" (The Voice of Insurance, Sep 29).
  • A catastrophe modeller says the industry should expect about $171 billion of insured cat losses in an average year, against a first half that came in under $50 billion. Rob Newbold of Verisk: "Market cycles don't dictate risk levels, they dictate how you react to it." On the same models, the 1-in-100-year loss is "almost $500 billion" (The Reinsurance Podcast, Sep 28).
  • Lloyd's London Bridge investor platform has now placed just over $3.2 billion of capacity across 39 deals, and investors keep coming. Angus Jordan, who chairs the London Bridge vehicles, gave the figures. Lauren Johnson of Acrisure Re described a "perfect storm" for Lloyd's: "rates probably being the highest in a generation. We've had no cat losses. We've also had strong investment returns" (Artemis Live, Sep 28).

What's new

A 40-year underwriter on why he'll write less property next year, and why he won't bet on the market finding its own floor. The Voice of Insurance, Ep318 Jack Kuhn Westfield Specialty: Taking the long-term view, Sep 29, host Mark Geoghegan. Jack Kuhn (operator/insider) is president of Westfield Specialty. He started at Chubb in 1986 and later helped build Axis. Westfield Specialty is the specialty arm of Westfield Group, a 178-year-old US mutual (an insurer owned by its policyholders rather than by shareholders). It launched in July 2021 and bought Lloyd's Syndicate 1200 within a year. Kuhn says it will write "close to 2.4 billion in gross written premium" this year with "over 600 employees" in seven offices, and it turned a profit "in our second full year. We weren't really supposed to do that until our fourth year."

His central point is that no single "market" moves together any more. In the 1985–86 liability crisis "that was what I would refer to as the big bang. Like really hard market for everyone, all lines." Today, "every product area has its own journey through that market cycle. They're not 100% linked." His line-by-line read:

  • Property is the weak spot. "Great market after Ian. I think we probably have given back almost all of the rate that we initially got from that through last year and this year." (Hurricane Ian hit Florida in September 2022 and helped trigger the sharp price rises of 2023.) Whether property gets worse "will be interesting to see... if this turns out to be another benign cat season."
  • Accident & health (A&H) is the "very pleasant surprise." He is leaning in after a hard market (rising prices, tighter terms) developed there, "coming out of some of the softness that they had with COVID," with "stronger pricing and stronger terms and conditions on the reinsurance side and also on the direct side."
  • Financial lines and cyber are recovering. Both "had gotten soft very quickly after we first launched. We sort of pulled back." Now "it seems like that's now getting back to a more positive rate environment."
  • Casualty has an uncertain tail. "There still is a lot of concern about how long the tail really is. Are we seeing this shift in claims being settled quicker than what they had been before COVID?" (The "tail" is how long claims keep arriving and being paid after a policy ends.) He warned against treating casualty as one number: talk about "the individual lines that are making up your portfolio and what the loss trends are for those versus trying to impose a larger loss trend."

On how far prices can fall, Geoghegan put the popular argument to him: underwriters know where the technically correct price is, so the market should bounce once it gets there. Kuhn's reply: "people are banking on that sort of approach. I wouldn't really take that bet. I think it's going to be a continuation because the brokers and the clients are still going to have these expectations about continued softening if there hasn't been cat activity." Geoghegan added that combined ratios (claims plus costs as a share of premium; under 100% means an underwriting profit) "could still look very, very good" while hiding business that was priced too low. Kuhn agreed: "you're going to find out how deficient you are when you start to see the normalization of the cats coming back."

He also explained how cheap reinsurance feeds price cutting at the primary level: "a softening reinsurance market is good in one sense and it's problematic on the other in the sense of how competitive it will make things because people feel that they don't have the net exposure, that they can be more aggressive on pricing in terms and conditions." In plain terms, an insurer that passes most of the risk to reinsurers has less of its own money at stake, so it can afford to cut prices. His fix is to make his underwriters price "on a gross basis, not on a net basis." That means judging each risk as if Westfield kept all of it. He also warned against leaning too hard on reinsurance in a soft market: "at some point in time, it's going to turn. And if you're that heavy on the reinsurance side, it really puts you in a precarious position."

A catastrophe modeller's reminder: one quiet year is not the average. The Reinsurance Podcast, Monte Carlo #72: Rob Newbold - The Industry Should Be Ready for a $170B+ Cat Year, Sep 28, hosts Jared and Ben of Superseed. Rob Newbold of Verisk, the catastrophe-modelling firm, is a commentator here: his firm builds the models but doesn't take on the risk. He said Verisk had just put out its estimate of the "current global modeled insured catastrophe loss at $171 billion." That is the average insured loss to expect in a year at today's exposure levels. He admitted "it's maybe a difficult message for the market to digest given we're looking at a first half actual loss at sub $50 billion. And lots of talk this week about market cycles and rates declining."

His numbers for how bad a bad year can get:

  • The past, restated. "If you forecast 2017 into today's dollars, it's over $200 billion." (2017 was the year of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.)
  • The tail. "We have the 1% EP at almost $500 billion." In plain terms, Verisk's models give a 1% chance in any year of insured cat losses near half a trillion dollars.
  • How you get there. "When you start looking at the compounding of frequency peril risk from severe thunderstorms and wildfires, and you add a hurricane to that, it's not hard to get into that really tail region." ("Frequency perils" are the smaller, more common events, such as hail and severe storms, that add up over a year.)

His closing advice was blunt: "while we've had no hurricanes last year, none so far this year in a light cat year, that doesn't mean it's not possible. The hundred and seventy one billion dollars is an average that you should be ready to experience and much worse as possible." He also flagged data centres as a new pile-up of exposure. Verisk has built a database of where they sit, "what are they made of, what's their hyperscaler capacity," so insurers can see "what do you maybe have on your books that you didn't realize you had?" A modeller warning that risk is underpriced is a bit like a fire-alarm salesman warning about fires. He said so himself: "we are biased, of course." The numbers still deserve attention.

Inside Lloyd's investor pipeline: $3.2 billion placed, and the new money is now mostly private equity. Artemis Live, Unlocking capital at Lloyd's: Evolution of London Bridge ILS platform - Artemis London 2026, Sep 28. The panel was moderated by Ed Saul of Artex Capital Solutions. It featured Angus Jordan (Lloyd's; chair of the London Bridge II and London Bridge RISC vehicles), Lauren Johnson (head of Funds at Lloyd's at Acrisure Re Corporate Advisory & Solutions), Deepon Sengupta (head of capital partnerships, Oak Global) and Perry Thomas (CEO, Flood Re). All four are operators/insiders. London Bridge is the set of UK vehicles that let pension funds, private equity and other outside investors back Lloyd's business directly. This is the "ILS," or insurance-linked securities, route into Lloyd's.

The scale and the mix:

  • Size. London Bridge RISC launched in January 2021 and London Bridge II in August 2022. "Since then, through some 39 cells, we've written just over 3.2 billion US of capacity," said Jordan. About "75% of what we've done" goes through the Funds at Lloyd's route, where the investor provides the capital that lets a Lloyd's member underwrite.
  • Who is investing. "When we started, it was the pension funds." Now "60, 70% of the investors are from that sort of alternative asset, private equity" world. Family offices started showing up last year, along with "some sovereign wealth fund" activity "in the latter half of last year."
  • Still a small share. When London Bridge began, "something under 5 percent" of Lloyd's solvency capital came from institutional investors. Jordan contrasted that with "60, 65 percent" at the large reinsurer he used as a comparison, saying Lloyd's is "quite considerably underweight... and it's gradually changing."
  • Big insurers using it. Jordan named AIG and Allianz as examples of global insurers that started new Lloyd's syndicates. Each took a slice ("10, 20 percent") of its own outgoing reinsurance and partnered with an institutional investor through London Bridge. This, he said, "increases reinsurance provision, competitive tension, reduces the average cost of capital."
  • Cat bonds. London Bridge has done "six CatBonds... four of them are indemnity based. Two are industry loss warranty based." (An indemnity bond pays on the insurer's own actual losses. An industry-loss bond pays when total market losses pass a set level.) Jordan said Ariel Re's Titania series moved its issuance from Bermuda to the UK this year "on a very, very similar cost basis to the Bermuda market." Oak Global's Sengupta said Oak "launched our first cat bond earlier this year" and may use London next time.

Why investors like it is mostly capital efficiency. "By doing 135% of the solvency number, you're getting access to a double A minus rated reinsurance paper or insurance paper. Whereas if you looked at that in a comparable marketplace, you'd probably be having to put up 200%," said Jordan. Johnson added that an investor spread across several syndicates and years can run "a capital ratio of 40, 50 percent, which is incredibly unique."

What comes next:

  • Syndicate sidecars. A sidecar is a separate vehicle that takes a slice of one insurer's book. A sidecar of a single syndicate's portfolio is "hot on the agenda," and Jordan expects one "sooner rather than later."
  • Casualty sidecars. Johnson called them "quite in vogue at the moment," but said "the biggest question mark I hear over them is how you exit." She argued Lloyd's three-year closing process is the "well trodden path" that answers that.
  • More flexible cells. Rules allowing one cell to cover multiple reinsurance contracts are due "in the next 18 months."
  • Pipeline. New entrants to Lloyd's "is definitely driving the pipeline that we're seeing between now and the end of the year."

There were two warnings. Johnson: "as the market softens, the capital required will be ever more pertinent," and investors still say Lloyd's costs are "higher than Bermuda." Jordan: "the market has had an incredible period. That means that... there is a reasonable amount of capital about that can put pressure on prices," and Lloyd's oversight will need to "maintain that discipline."

Flood Re's cat bond: why a UK government-backed pool chose London over Bermuda. On the same Artemis Live panel, Flood Re CEO Perry Thomas (operator/insider) explained his scheme. Flood Re is an industry-government partnership that takes a levy from insurers to subsidise reinsurance for homes at high flood risk. It issued the first cat bond through London Bridge II by a non-Lloyd's vehicle. "It's cost effective wherever you are in the world... We are in this kind of partnership with government and you talk about going to Bermuda. Yeah, you're going to get some questions." Flood Re buys its reinsurance on a three-year cycle and "the plans are there to include more of those kind of cat bonds. It was effective. It was cost effective." He was also frank about where the flood problem stands. Government spending on defences is "up to about 1.4 billion this year," but "the insurance industry side of creating a kind of property level flood resilience has probably gone backwards in 10 years."

The debate

Both sides were voiced this week, on a simple question: is now still a good time to put money into the risk?

Yes. The Lloyd's capital panel made the case. Johnson: "right now, it's an incredibly attractive investment." Sengupta of Oak Global: Lloyd's "fundamentally still a very attractive place to invest," and "the fact that we've had five years of profitability means that investors continue to explore." The draw is the combination of high price levels (still, by Johnson's account, near "the highest in a generation"), no big cat losses, good investment returns and capital rules that need less money per dollar of cover.

Not so fast. Kuhn is shrinking his property book because the post-Ian gains are "almost all" gone, and he "wouldn't really take that bet" that prices will stop falling by themselves. Newbold says a year with $171 billion of insured cat losses is the average, not the disaster, and the first half ran under $50 billion. Even the bulls' own platform added a caution, with Jordan warning that the available capital "can put pressure on prices."

Our read: the two sides aren't really arguing about today's margins. They're arguing about what you're paid for. The investors are looking at five profitable years. Kuhn and Newbold are pointing at what hasn't happened in them. The timing echoes Argenta's warning last week that new investors may be arriving "a year or two too late."

The names in play

  • AIG. Mentioned only in passing. Lloyd's Angus Jordan cited it, with Allianz, as a global insurer that set up a Lloyd's syndicate taking "10, 20 percent" of its own outgoing reinsurance, backed by an institutional investor. AIG did not speak, and nothing was said about its pricing or results.
  • Non-US and private names that spoke: Westfield Specialty (US mutual, not listed), Verisk (cat modeller), Lloyd's, Acrisure Re, Oak Global, Flood Re and Artex Capital Solutions. Beazley was credited as the first insurer to issue cat bonds through London Bridge, and Ariel Re for moving its Titania cat bond series from Bermuda to the UK.

Read-throughs

  • Pure reinsurers (RNR, EG, ACGL): Mildly negative for pricing into January 1. Kuhn, a reinsurance buyer, says cheap reinsurance is making primary insurers "more aggressive on pricing in terms and conditions," and he expects softening to continue as long as brokers and clients expect it. Newbold's $171 billion average gives reinsurers a ready argument for holding price. But a modeller's estimate has never set prices by itself while losses keep coming in lighter than the models expect.
  • ILS / cat-bond / alternative capital: The best-covered theme of the week. Capital is still arriving, now led by private equity and alternative-asset investors, with family offices and sovereign wealth starting to show up. The platforms are adding structures: syndicate sidecars, casualty sidecars and debt-plus-equity layering in a single cell. London is presenting itself as a credible rival to Bermuda for cat bonds (Ariel Re, Flood Re). The risk is the same one Jordan named: more capital, more pressure on price.
  • Primary specialty / E&S (KNSL, WRB, MKL, HG, SKWD): Westfield is the closest listed-adjacent example: a specialty and Lloyd's writer cutting property volume, adding A&H, and seeing cyber and financial lines improve. Asked whether E&S and delegated business (where carriers let managing general agents, or MGAs, underwrite on their behalf) has permanently taken a bigger slice of US commercial insurance, Kuhn was cautious: "there's a hope that is going to be the case as long as... we don't follow what we've done in the past about just following it all the way down until it goes off the rails." He expects MGA business to be "a growing segment for almost every carrier," but warned it comes with "a much higher acquisition cost."
  • Brokers (MMC, AON, AJG, WTW, BRO): The broker-related signal came from Kuhn's scepticism about broker-run facilities, the automated arrangements where carriers sign up to follow a broker's placements. Brokers argue these will survive this soft market because they are now central to the broker's own business. Kuhn: "I'm not sure I do" buy that. "If we get into a soft market and the pricing keeps going down when the data is saying it shouldn't go down, but other people are willing to step in, that's really, I think, when you see these facilities running into problems."

What changed

  1. Pulling back spread from reinsurance to primary property. Last week Everest's reinsurance chief said the firm had "pull[ed] back from certain layers and certain programs." This week a specialty insurer said the same about its direct property book: writing less, "significantly off our plan," and fine with it. Two carriers in two weeks choosing to shrink rather than chase is a small but real pattern.
  2. A split on cyber. Last week Brit's Simon Bird called cyber "constantly under pressure" and said parts of the US market are better avoided. This week Westfield's Kuhn said cyber and financial lines are "getting back to a more positive rate environment." Both may be right for their own books, which is Kuhn's point about each line having "its own journey."
  3. The London Bridge numbers firmed up. Last week Lloyd's Rachel Turk put London Bridge 2 at "30 or 40 odd transactions." This week the vehicles' chair gave the precise count: 39 cells and just over $3.2 billion of capacity across both vehicles.

What hasn't changed: still no hurricane, and still nobody expecting January 1 to be anything but softer.