IGI expects political violence to be ‘the next hard market’
Political violence hasn’t hardened alongside other classes of treaty reinsurance but, in the current environment, it could potentially soon enter a true hard market, Waleed Jabsheh (pictured), president of International General Insurance (IGI), told Intelligent Insurer.
Since its inception in 2001, IGI has been committed to providing specialty lines insurance and reinsurance solutions to its clients’ complex risks. “The political violence market now is extremely dislocated. It was a market that was created after 9/11, at a time when anxiety levels for these types of exposure were very high,” Jabsheh said.
“When people went into it, prices were ‘high multiples’ of what they are today and companies were making money hand over fist in this class. After 9/11, there was much less activity in that market and, because of that lull in loss activity, it became benevolent to the actual coverage that was being provided. It became a volume-driven game for many,” he added.
The political violence landscape has changed quite a bit over the last few years, however, and has included riots in South Africa last year, riots in Chile two years before that, the Black Lives Matter movement in the US that fronted civil unrest across parts of that country, and then, “to cap it all”, Jabsheh said, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
“That market has suffered quite a bit from a loss perspective, which clearly indicates that the behaviour of underwriters in the pricing environment is not sustainable at all. We’ve seen that shift in appetite from the reinsurers and we think that will continue.
