{"id":10053,"date":"2025-06-18T05:56:45","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T05:56:45","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-06-18T05:59:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T05:59:03","slug":"how-tfp-is-navigating-a-shifting-pvt-risk-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/how-tfp-is-navigating-a-shifting-pvt-risk-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Fidelis Partnership holds firm on principles amid PV\u2019s competitive market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TFP\u2019s Billy Ayres says the MGA remains disciplined as evolving risks test the resilience of underwriters in a fiercely competitive political violence marketplace.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political violence<\/a> and terrorism<\/a> (PVT) insurance market has endured a turbulent five years, shaped by a wave of geopolitical shocks\u2014from mass unrest in Chile to the full-scale war in Ukraine and the recent flare-ups of violence in the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Billy Ayres, Head of Terrorism at The Fidelis Partnership (TFP), a managing general agent backed by capacity from Fidelis Insurance Group, the market remains in a state of dynamic change rather than any settled maturity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe PVT market is, by the nature of the coverage provided, required to evolve rapidly and needs to change constantly in order to be relevant to the developing geopolitical and security risk environment,\u201d said Ayres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has \u2018matured\u2019 since the creation of the stand-alone PVT product but there will always be a requirement for it to change fast in response to clients\u2019 needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the underwriting team at TFP had always focused on providing solutions, especially during moments of heightened risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are proud of our reputation as a lead market and are often prepared to offer a quote even for heightened risks to help clients navigate what can be a very fast-changing geopolitical landscape,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soft but dangerous<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the increased complexity of global threats\u2014from strikes, riot and civil commotion (SRCC) to terrorism and state-backed sabotage\u2014the political violence market remains soft and fiercely competitive. Capacity deployed by insurers keen to grow specialty lines continues to outweigh demand, despite the volatile risk environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur approach is to flex our appetite to where the market is best priced,\u201d said Ayres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlthough the market is soft in places, this is not uniform, and we still see opportunity for disciplined underwriting<\/a> in a number of areas, based on our view of risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He acknowledged that recent years had seen some improvements in pricing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe new capacity coming in, and short-term memory that certain participants in the market have a tendency towards, is driving some of the price decreases being seen, but we will stick to our very clear underwriting principles,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As 2024 unfolded, with dozens of national elections scheduled across the globe, insurers braced for a wave of potential losses tied to unrest and political instability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo date, we have not seen any significant claims for ourselves or the PVT market,\u201d said Ayres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile a major election year, this did not materialise in any major SRCC events or losses. However, the losses and political unrest witnessed in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia should serve as a timely reminder as to why insurers need to adequately price, aggregate, and underwrite PVT perils.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discipline and diversity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ayres stressed the importance of robust exposure and portfolio management, pointing to the firm\u2019s analytical frameworks and internal modelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Fidelis Partnership has always had a very disciplined approach to risk management and aggregation, and this is no different for PVT,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn particular, with the PVT class, we have always understood the importance of having clear aggregate and exposure frameworks in place for various perils. We define this by looking at the varying threat levels in each country around the world and overlaying this with our own view of risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That localised view is critical to risk selection, and TFP\u2019s team is encouraged to avoid relying too heavily on familiar data sets or perspectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCollaboration is absolutely core to how we underwrite,\u201d said Ayres. \u201cWe draw on experience from across the underwriting team, helped by our daily underwriting call and the fact that every day our underwriters are in the office all together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For such a politically driven risk environment, he stressed the team makes a conscious effort to view the world without skew or bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are also very mindful of avoiding bias, for example not focusing on western media and ingesting a broad range of sources. Our underwriters are often travelling, which helps us to have a wider perspective, and we are a company that celebrates diversity of cultures, languages and views.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judgement counts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike some commercial insurance lines increasingly governed by modelled pricing and analytics-driven processes<\/a>, PVT remains a class where human judgment retains outsized value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ayres said the Fidelis Partnership maintains a broad toolkit, balancing structured data with on-the-ground insight and geopolitical context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe work very hard to make sure we are not overly reliant on one source of data or analytics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to make sure our decisions are based on as broad an understanding as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that pricing and underwriting also need to account for deeper realities than physical security alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will also seek to understand the risk environment beyond the physical protections a site has\u2014so examining what is going on behind the scenes locally, and the underlying political context.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TFP\u2019s Billy Ayres says the MGA remains disciplined as evolving risks test the resilience of underwriters in a fiercely competitive political violence marketplace. The political violence and terrorism (PVT) insurance market has endured a turbulent five years, shaped by a wave of geopolitical shocks\u2014from mass unrest in Chile to the full-scale war in Ukraine and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,26],"tags":[10,14,34],"line-of-business":[30,31],"class_list":["post-10053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-latest-insights","tag-exposure","tag-underwriting-workbench","tag-exact","line-of-business-political-risk","line-of-business-terrorism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10053"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=10053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}