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.
Your client's liability renewal came back cheaper this year. They're pleased, and fair enough.
What doesn't usually come up in that conversation is what was happening underneath the price. The claims environment is becoming more difficult to manage.
In Gallagher Bassett's 2026 Carrier Perspective report, Australian respondents reported higher claim frequency, higher cost per claim and greater complexity 1.
The opportunity for the broker is to turn the renewal from a price exercise into an evidence-based risk conversation: 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 cover is cheap does two jobs: it makes the risk easier to place today and if a claim emerges in three years, 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 softer renewal outcomes many brokers are seeing, although results remain account-specific.
The other side looks different. In Gallagher Bassett's 2026 Carrier Perspective report, 70% of Australian respondents observed both higher costs per claim and a rise in claim frequency, and nearly one in four ranked premium affordability and insurability as their top concern for 2026³.
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. Accounts with a clean loss history are getting the best terms of the cycle. Accounts 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 a client sits on isn't fixed. What they can show 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.
A business that recorded what happened when it happened 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 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 is exactly the sort of thing that resurfaces years later.
Conversations worth having
Four steps, and the first one takes ten minutes.
Identify five liability renewals coming 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.
Where there are gaps, talk to us. We'll help agree two or three controls worth focusing on, which is what a Risk Action Plan is for.
Carry that evidence into the submission. An underwriter can only take account of what they are shown.
A sentence to open with: "Your premium came down this year. Before you bank it, can I show you what some of that could buy you at the next renewal, and if you ever have to claim?"
Getting ahead of the risk
None of this asks your client to spend more. It asks them to spend part of what they just saved on something with a longer payback than a cheaper year. Underwriters can only price what they can verify. A risk with a documented history is easier to place, and more likely to attract competing quotes.
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 hard part isn't collecting the data. It's knowing which parts of it matter, and that's exactly what our next webinar takes on.
AI on the ground: Find the signal
Your operation generates thousands of data points a day. The hard part is knowing which signals deserve attention and what to do next.
In the first episode of this four-part series, learn how to:
Spot the operational signals that deserve attention, and the ones that don't
Prioritise by impact rather than by whatever surfaced most recently
Move from reacting to what already went wrong to acting on what hasn't happened yet
Worth forwarding to the operations leaders inside your clients' businesses
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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