Global Commercial Insurance Prices Continue Trending Higher: Marsh

May 16, 2019

Average global commercial insurance prices grew by 3 percent in the first three months of 2019, representing the sixth consecutive quarter of price increases for the overall sector, Marsh said in its latest Global Insurance Market Index.

What’s more, the Q1 average price increase for the sector is the largest since Marsh began the survey in 2012, it said. While price hikes appear to be locking in, Marsh insisted that capacity remains robust for the most part.

“While 3 percent is the largest average increase in insurance pricing we have seen since the index began in 2012, market capacity remains strong in most products and geographies,” Dean Klisura, president, Global Placement at Marsh, said in prepared remarks.

Not all prices trended higher. Casualty prices, for example, declined globally at 0.7 percent, continuing a trend of year-over-year declines stretching back to 2013.

In the U.S., insurance pricing in the 2019 first quarter grew by 1.1 percent. Casualty pricing, which has decreased in the U.S. in all but one quarter since 2014, did so again, down 1.7 percent.

Other findings from the first-quarter report:

For Marsh’s U.S. composite pricing, increases were at the highest rate since 2013. Other U.S. findings:

Source: Marsh

*A version of this story ran previously in our sister publication Insurance Journal.