A flight to quality in the personal lines market that gathered pace during 2020 is likely to continue into 2021, Burns and Wilcox’s personal insurance practice leader has said.
Speaking on Thursday at a webinar held by the wholesale broker, Bill Gatewood said heavy catastrophe losses during 2020 had focused clients’ minds on the need for stable capacity and also led insurers to curtail the number of brokers they wish to work with.
“We saw carriers want to work with fewer partners…with their stronger, better partners, and we’ve seen that across the board.”
“If you take an already unprofitable marketplace and put on the $76bn to $82bn of loss, I think as we look at 2021 we’ll continue to see more of the same,” he said.
Gatewood added that he expects rate rises across the personal lines markets to continue and that quality organizations would “thrive” in the current marketplace.
“Our April 1 contracts are pretty well negotiated and buttoned up, and ready to go into place. We’ll have more market capacity in 2021,” he said.
