World Property and Casualty Insurance Report 2024

The global P&C insurance industry faces significant challenges, with global combined ratios reaching 103% in 2022. Inflationary pressure and a volatile risk landscape have tested traditional underwriting strategies; accurate risk prediction and pricing are becoming increasingly challenging and leading to insurability concerns. In response, P&C insurers need to rethink their underwriting strategy to drive tangible business benefits.

Findings from the World Property and Casualty Insurance Report 2024, which reflects the views of 294 insurance executives, 201 insurance underwriters, and 3,323 policyholders, include:

• Underwriting challenges mount for P&C Insurers due to extreme weather events, digital disruption, and escalating customer demands – leading to sub-optimal combined ratios.
• Driving an underwriting transformation requires P&C insurers to connect the data dots, unlock actionable insights, and evolve the role of the underwriter towards strategic and sales-enablement activities.
• Trailblazers that actively work towards underwriting transformation can drive efficiency, fuel accuracy, and enhance the customer/broker experience.

Highlight 1

Static practices create challenges across the underwriting value chain.

According to our 2024 Global Insurance Underwriters’ Survey – static underwriting practices create challenges across different elements of the underwriting value chain. These include data collection, which is hindered by manual processes; risk assessment, where underwriters struggle to build competitively priced policies; and quote generation, where underwriters find it challenging to meet rising broker and customer expectations.

Highlight 2

Leverage our intelligent underwriting playbook to help operationalize an underwriting transformation.

Insurers seeking to drive underwriting profitability and unlock business growth can utilize our intelligent underwriting playbook: it offers a framework to transform underwriting and deliver business results by connecting the data dots, unlocking actionable insights using predictive analytics for accurate pricing, and evolving the underwriter role towards strategic and sales-enablement activities.

Highlight 3

Insurers’ current technology maturity remains limited.

According to our Global Insurance Executives’ Survey – P&C insurers claiming advanced capabilities across critical technologies such as the cloud environment , predictive models, and AI remain in the minority. Insurers have an opportunity to invest in these technologies to drive productivity, customer experience, and underwriting discipline.

Highlight 4

Underwriting trailblazers reap efficiency, accuracy, and experience-related benefits.

According to our Global Insurance Executives’ Survey, the top 8% of insurers are underwriting trailblazers, actively defining automated, data-driven recommendations or decisions. Trailblazers turn advanced underwriting capabilities into tangible benefits, and they rarely miss business targets for efficiency, accuracy, and customer/broker experience – significantly outpacing conventional insurers.

Download the full report: