According to the Lloyd’s yearly market report, the 2020 casualty treaty market saw a number of pre-existing trends accelerate as the market faced issues such as diminishing capacity, tightening policy coverage and significant price strengthening in distressed and high exposure accounts across most lines of business.
US Workers’ Compensation remained competitive, yet concerns remain around the impact of COVID-19 and in particular presumption laws being brought in some states of the US.
Lloyd’s says motor excess of loss business is continuing to perform below expectations, while the sought after relief from a winding back of the Ogden rate to -0.25% in 2019, which was maintained in 2020 (from the previous level of -0.75%), has not had as significant an impact as hoped.
The prior year movement was a release 2.3% (2019: strengthening of 1.7%). Despite 2020 being a year of relatively benign prior year claims experience for casualty reinsurance business, emerging trends such as social inflation are driving increased uncertainty on this line.
US casualty treaty business performed slightly better than expected, whereas non-US casualty was been in line with expectations. Personal accident excess of loss was broadly in line with expectations.
Looking ahead, Lloyd’s says it will be specifically and closely monitoring social inflation to develop better market understanding of the trend to ensure adequate and robust pricing and reserving in the market.
A tranche of that work is expected to explore how the trend might develop in future years and whether social inflationary trends can be anticipated.
