{"id":6383,"date":"2023-12-22T08:25:18","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T08:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"httpss:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/?p=6383"},"modified":"2025-04-04T05:28:56","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T05:28:56","slug":"new-podcast-with-julie-wood-ceo-of-qbe-north-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/content\/new-podcast-with-julie-wood-ceo-of-qbe-north-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating changing risks, reinsurance markets for US P&amp;C"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Ep193 Julie Wood CEO QBE North America: Acting on the best available information\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?from=embed&amp;i=ww4b7-152b8d4-pb&amp;share=0&amp;download=1&amp;fonts=Tahoma&amp;skin=3267a3&amp;font-color=&amp;rtl=0&amp;logo_link=&amp;btn-skin=1b1b1b&amp;size=150\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The latest guest of the Voice of Insurance podcast has just become the CEO of a business writing over $7bn in gross premium a year, which if it were a standalone company, would make her one of the most powerful female CEOs in the global insurance industry.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The insurance industry has always relied on historical variance to predict the future, but it is struggling to price many of its perils based on these foundations. This was a takeaway from Julie Wood, Chief Executive of QBE North America, who was Mark Geoghegan\u2019s latest&nbsp; guest on the Voice of Insurance podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is hitting traditional perils, such as property business, because of emerging risks associated with climate change, she emphasised, at the same time as&nbsp; inflation-caused claims shifts for casualty business, as well as emerging products, such as the cyber insurance market, marked by a fast-changing threat environment, and for which there has never been a reliable back catalogue of relevant loss frequency or severity, to guide rate adequacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe market is challenging. I\u2019ve seen a lot of fluctuation on rate, depending on the line of business,\u201d she said. \u201cIt&#8217;s hard to rely on the old historical actuarial modelling price. The insured is experiencing a lot of fluctuation around rate, as challenges and profitability and capacity are being balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The US market is challenging for property and casualty insurers to navigate, she suggested, in the context of previous rate hikes, but balanced with reinsurers\u2019 own round of dramatic pricing increases at recent renewals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pricing spasms in US primary business have previously involved a few lines of business, in the wake of a disaster event, whereas the current pricing turn \u2013 powered by the hard market turn for reinsurance, dramatically increasing insurers\u2019 costs across the board \u2013 is more whole-hearted and across most if not all classes of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wood suggested that some US primary market pricing was still weak for the risks being run by insurers, namechecking directors\u2019 and officers\u2019 liability (D&amp;O) as one line of concern for both frequency and severity of claims activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe continue to see challenges in the market on pricing adequacy and coverage challenges, which stem from inflationary issues, whether because everyone values are different than what they were a few years ago, wage inflation, social inflation, the general propensity for claimed to be litigated has gone way up, and awards have become much, much more severe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Claims concerns are not restricted to D&amp;O, Wood emphasised, with cyber risks an emerging risk, subject to \u201ctremendous fluctuation,\u201d with rate, coverage and limits being revisited and restricted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mark suggested that insurers can find themselves squeezed between reinsurers\u2019 recent rate rises, and pressure from stretched clients and their brokers, already coping with previous price increases. The answer, she responded, is that it depends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For larger clients, balance sheets are strong enough to take risks, while for middle market firms, there is still sufficient insurance capacity and some competitive pricing, depending on the products, they\u2019re buying, she suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a very political, diplomatic answer. There are times that we\u2019re able to justify the rate, whether that&#8217;s because of loss experience, or sheer lack of capacity, such as in a cat prone areas, there&#8217;s a lack of insurance supply. Overall, every insurance company is restricting how much capacity they\u2019re putting out, so building a programme has become more challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wood observed that with renewals in process, particularly for reinsurance, but with underlying loss trends and primary pricing dynamics still taking shape, prices are very much in flux, and underwriters are in a discovery process to find out where their expectations sit within the wider market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s in the last few weeks of the year that we really find out where we all are, whether we&#8217;re aligning or challenged in regards to what we think is the appropriate amount of rate there,\u201d she said. \u201cWe agree there are trends demanding different areas of rate, whether or not that&#8217;s already been corrected. There was a fair amount of pressure on reinsurance a year ago. We&#8217;re hoping to see some of that start to flatten across the spectrum, but we need trends to flatten too \u2013 so, we&#8217;ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest guest of the Voice of Insurance podcast has just become the CEO of a business writing over $7bn in gross premium a year, which if it were a standalone company, would make her one of the most powerful female CEOs in the global insurance industry. The insurance industry has always relied on historical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[10,14],"line-of-business":[24,28,20],"class_list":["post-6383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-latest-insights","tag-exposure","tag-underwriting-workbench","line-of-business-cyber","line-of-business-general-liability","line-of-business-property"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383","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=6383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6383"},{"taxonomy":"line-of-business","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.advantagego.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line-of-business?post=6383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}