Carriers are aggressively defending their existing books and competing for new opportunities to offset slowing topline premium growth. Shared and layered programs remain the most competitive segment, although single-carrier programs are also seeing rate improvement as insurers increasingly push to deploy more meaningful limits.

Retail carriers remain well capitalized and aggressive on high-quality risks. Wholesale markets continue to provide essential capacity for complex, catastrophe-exposed, or distressed accounts with more selective deployment, especially around secondary perils and large time-element limits. Many programs now blend retail and wholesale capacity as a deliberate strategy to optimize structure, pricing, and limit adequacy.

Carriers continue to take a disciplined approach to challenged accounts, including those with sizable losses or heavy catastrophe risk exposure. In practice, however, even these buyers are seeing improved pricing with programs that are oversubscribed.

Large contingent time element limits remain difficult to obtain at pricing that makes sense for most buyers. Insurers view these exposures as highly volatile and more difficult to model, especially given ongoing supply chain uncertainty, tariffs, and sensitivity to secondary perils.

Despite an ominous start to 2025, including the California wildfires and spring storm activity, the Atlantic hurricane season was surprisingly benign, with no hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. for the first time since 2015. (Chantal made landfall in South Carolina in July as a tropical storm.) For insurers, this provided a valuable earnings tailwind, strengthening capital positions and reinforcing competitive conditions.

For buyers, the absence of a major hurricane has supported continued rate relief and broader capacity. Both sides, however, recognize that one quiet season does not change the long-term trajectory of climate volatility.

Parametric products have lost some momentum as traditional capacity has returned and pricing has become more competitive. Even so, they remain an important strategic tool, particularly for buyers with hard-to-model exposures, catastrophe-prone operations, or supply chain vulnerabilities. Recent reports of parametric payouts following Hurricane Melissa’s landfall in Jamaica have also renewed interest, underscoring the value of fast, trigger-based recovery versus traditional coverage, which is slower and more restrictive. In a market where secondary perils and contingent time element exposures remain difficult to place, parametrics may offer a meaningful option.