Falling premiums, rising claims: the liability gap
The record your clients build while cover is cheap works twice: once at renewal, and again if a claim ever lands.
Published
You secured a premium reduction for your client this year. They're pleased, and fair enough.
What doesn't usually come up in that conversation is what was happening underneath the reduction. The claims environment is becoming more difficult to manage. Industry research points to higher claim frequency, higher cost per claim and greater complexity 1.
Your client's renewal is the perfect opportunity to sit down and hold an evidence-based risk conversations: what changed, what was found, what was fixed and what still needs attention. A soft market is a window, not a windfall. The record a business builds while capacity is increased does two jobs: it makes the risk easier to place today and if a claim emerges years later, it's what the facts rest on.
What the numbers actually say
Pacific casualty rates fell 10% in the second quarter of 2026, part of a 13% composite decline across the region, according to Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index². That is consistent with the renewal outcomes many brokers are seeing, although results remain account-specific.
Competition sets today's price. Claims experience sets tomorrow's. Pricing can sit below the level needed to cover the full cost of future claims for a while, and when performance deteriorates, underwriting appetite and capacity tighten.
The softness isn't evenly spread. Clients with a clean loss history are getting the best terms of the cycle. Clients carrying severity in their claims profile, complicated contractual risk transfer or US exposure are still getting scrutiny and still paying for it.
Which side of that line your client sits on isn't fixed. What they can demonstrate about how they manage their risk and their business is an important differentiator, alongside the nature of the risk, its exposures and its claims history.
The second job your client's records do
Set the market cycle aside for a moment because this part holds regardless of what rates do.
When an incident occurs, a business that recorded what happened at the time is in a different position. It has a contemporaneous account rather than a reconstruction. It can notify sooner, which means a circumstance can be looked at while it is still manageable, and it has documents rather than recollections. Coverage response still depends on the policy wording, the trigger, the notification and the jurisdiction, but when an incident becomes a claim, the record is what the facts rest on.
The counterintuitive part is that the most valuable records are the ones that felt pointless at the time. A minor incident nobody thought twice about can resurface years later.
Conversations worth having
Four steps worth taking into your next round of renewals.
Identify five clients with a policy expiry up in the next 90 days.
Ask each client what risk evidence they could produce today. Inspection records, incidents and how they were closed out, training completion; what documented evidence can be provided upon short notice.
Where there are gaps, talk to Mitti Insurance. We'll help agree two or three controls worth focusing on, which is what the Mitti app can help on.
Carry that evidence into the submission. An underwriter can only take account of what they are shown.
This is what separates a renewal conversation from a price conversation. In a softening market, the broker who helps a client understand their risk, reduce it and show what has changed isn't placing a policy, they're advising on risk. That's the relationship that holds its value when the cycle turns and price stops being the story. The client stays the focus, the broker stays at the centre, and Mitti is the enabler where practical tools help.
Getting ahead of the risk
Underwriters can only assess what they are shown. A client with a documented history can make the risk easier to assess and support a more productive renewal conversation.
Mitti was built on that idea: prevent more, claim less. Every policyholder gets the Mitti app for inspections, training and hazard reporting, plus quarterly Risk Action Plans designed by our risk engineers. The work these produce is what a broker takes to market, and what a client stands on if an incident becomes a claim.
¹ ³ Gallagher Bassett. (2026). The carrier perspective: 2026 claims insights. https://www.gallagherbassett.com/the-carrier-perspective-claims-insights
² Marsh. (2026). Global insurance market index: Pacific insurance rates. Retrieved September 16, 2026, from https://www.marsh.com/en/services/international-placement-services/insights/pacific-insurance-rates.html
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