Maintaining momentum…

This week we began conducting interviews for the latest instalment of our Prospective series on The Insurer TV, with a focus on the US programs sector.

It wouldn’t be giving too much away to say that there was a strong emphasis on growth opportunities in a sector that has already been rapidly expanding in recent years, often at a faster rate than the wider P&C insurance industry.

That growth potential comes from existing programs as a result of pricing tailwinds, increasing demand for the sector’s offerings, and capital coming in to access the risk. And there are also opportunities to innovate to bring new programs to the market, including insurtech partnerships and solutions addressing underinsured risk.

And in this month’s issue of Program Manager the news flow has likewise been dominated by developments aimed at capturing those opportunities.

We lead on news that property cat-focused MGU SageSure is on course to go past $800mn of premium volumes this year and is supporting its growth efforts with the launch of reciprocal exchange SURE.

The move adds stable capacity to its existing panel of carriers, with plans for the vehicle to expand beyond its launch state of Texas to bring homeowners offerings to a multi-state footprint.

We also follow-up on news earlier this week that expansive US specialty insurer Skyward has partnered with tech-enabled MGA reThought to target what it sees as a commercial flood market that is “wide, wide open”.

The move is an example of the appetite and aptitude of the US programs and MGA sector to innovate and bring capacity to segments of the marketplace where there is currently a shortage of coverage options for insureds.

The US commercial flood market has been estimated to be a $15bn premium opportunity for (re)insurers and MGAs that are able to navigate the challenges of modelling and underwriting the peril to bring capacity to a segment that is underserved by the NFIP and existing private market solutions.

There are several other examples of innovative moves in this month’s issue to bring capacity and solutions to segments of the market where they are needed.

Partnerships

Coalition’s partnership with Intuit to distribute cyber coverage to QuickBooks customers is addressing a SME market where penetration rates are still relatively low for businesses and loss frequency is surging from ransomware attacks and other events.

Dual and Accredited’s move to extend their partnership with a new US D&O offering brings capacity to a sector that continues to see strong rate hardening amid retrenchment from carriers.

And Beazley’s capacity support for insurtech Scale’s liability coverage aimed at social media influencers is surely a need that now exists that wouldn’t have been contemplated a decade ago.

Elsewhere in the sector, M&A activity continues unabated – most notably in recent weeks with CRC parent Truist’s move to buy Constellation Affiliated Partners – and capital continues to flood into the insurtech space, including several MGA/MGU players.

Next month we’ll discuss in more detail some of the themes that emerge from our US program sector-focused episode of Prospective.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the read…