Published on 29 March 2022
Share:
Energy Market Update: Casualty
Published on 29 March 2022
The North American energy market begins to stabilize with new entrants in the space. The international market however could suffer from insurers imposing climate change exclusions.
North American Energy Casualty
As we begin 2022, the market now has more options when putting together the lead umbrella, however there remains very few markets dedicated enough to the space to put out a significant limit on a meaningful basis. That being said, new entrants are keen to support placements, which, coupled with aggressive domestic competition, especially on loss free business, is easing the pricing to insureds.
Deterioration in prior year claims has put pressure on the P&Ls of the established markets, with reserves continuing to prove to be insufficient. Inflation, both real and social, along with nuclear verdicts/settlements remain a concern, but these issues do not appear to have fed through to the treaty reinsurance market at 1/1.
Underwriters continue to manage their line sizes, with a push to pull back on large limit stretches. Our Alesco Excess Liability Facility remains a stable home for our upstream clients, with the ability to deploy significant limits excess of USD20m.
Although back year claims have seen deterioration, there remains ample capacity especially on excess layers. This has therefore had a welcome stabilisation effect with rate growth slowing dramatically, and even the occasional reduction being achieved.
New entrants of 2020 and 2021 now have a book of business from which to grow, helping to drive the competitiveness of the market into 2022. Brokers should be aware ahead of renewals that they may be able to requote placements with capacity available to fill layers. Nonetheless, challenging pockets of the market remain, principally in the wildfire and midstream subsectors.
International Energy Casualty
Overall market capacity is sufficient, and generally buyers have adequate choice when selecting their insurers. New entrants continue to arrive, alongside established markets, some of which have ambitions growth targets.
Rate increases continue to soften with renewal discussions typically starting around +5%, this is off the back of meaningful year-on-year increases over the last 36 months. There has been an increase in insurers looking to impose climate change exclusions, however as of yet, brokers/insureds have been successful in pushing back against restrictive language; we will continue to monitor this in 2022.
Share:
Billy Quelcutti
Billy returned to London in 2021 having been on a secondment to the US where he was working for Alesco’s regional office in Houston as a local wholesale energy broker. Having spent over 5 years in both the London and Houston energy markets, Billy has extensive knowledge of the global energy space from both an insurance and customer perspective. Billy originally joined Alesco in London in 2014 where he was recruited to focus on North American energy casualty business. Billy specializes in all aspects energy, power and renewables.
Billy started his career in 2010 for Price Forbes & Partners as an energy casualty technician and after a few years added some broker responsibilities to his skillset and began designing and placing large multinational energy casualty placements across the London, European and International markets.
