John Doyle, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of global insurance and reinsurance broking group Marsh, said today that while 2026 is unlikely to be Guy Carpenter’s best growth year, he is “pleased” with the reinsurance broker’s execution in the first quarter in spite of current headwinds.
Guy Carpenter recorded revenue of $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 3%, or 2% on an underlying basis, amid what Marsh CEO Doyle, during the firm’s recent earnings call, described as a very soft property catastrophe reinsurance market.
During the call, Doyle was asked whether the 2% underlying growth figure is where Guy Carpenter is likely to trend in the near term, in light of current pricing dynamics and further softening witnessed at the April 1 renewals.
He explained that Guy Carpenter is particularly exposed to the softer property cat environment in the first quarter, and also somewhat in the second quarter of the year given the Japan and mid-year Florida renewals.
“What I would say to you is that I’m quite pleased with our execution, in spite of the current good headwinds. And again, these market headwinds are good for our clients, right, so we’re delivering for our clients in the moment. But client retention was strong, and we had an excellent new business quarter. And so, I feel terrific about how the team’s executing what’s a challenging market. It’s not likely to be Guy Carpenter’s best growth year this year. And so, we’ve been planning for that and guiding to that,” said Doyle.
On the earnings call, executives at Marsh were also quizzed on demand in the current market landscape, and Dean Klisura, President and CEO of Guy Carpenter, emphasised that despite property market dynamics and other growth headwinds in the quarter, the reinsurance broker is seeing record new business across its platform.
“We grew double-digit new business growth in every region and business globally in the quarter, I was really pleased with that,” said Klisura. “As Mark and John noted, we continue to see a really strong cat bond market and ILS market overall.”
In fact, Guy Carpenter issued a record seven cat bonds in the first quarter of 2026, and Klisura highlighted that some $2 billion of new third-party capital entered the market purely chasing casualty sidecars, whole account quota shares, and other similar vehicles.
“I’ve talked in prior calls about our capital and advisory business, our investment banking boutique, we’ve never received more M&A advisory mandates, forming new sidecars, as I mentioned, raising capital for MGAs, Lloyd’s platforms, structured credit business, our MGA business,” said Klisura.
“And in the last call we talked about data centers. And just a couple of headlines there. There’s 50 deals that have been in the marketplace for more than seven and a half billion dollars of capital to put these together. And all of Guy Carpenter’s clients want to write more data centers, but they all need additional reinsurance protections. I think the newest element of it… is clients now are talking about issuing cat bonds and leveraging third-party capital to write more data center business. So, I would say overall, for Guy Carpenter, there’s more diverse new business opportunities that we’ve seen in several years,” he added.
During Doyle’s opening remarks, competitive insurance and reinsurance market conditions were highlighted, with Doyle noting that primary commercial insurance rates decreased 5% in Q1’26, driven largely by property, after a 4% decline in Q4’25, according to the Marsh Global Insurance Market Index, which skews for large accounts.
“Global property rates decreased 9% year over year, which was the same pace as last quarter. Global financial and professional liability rates were down 5%, cyber also decreased 5%. Global casualty rates increased 3%, with US excess casualty up 18%, reflecting ongoing pressure in the liability environment. And workers compensation decreased 1%,” said Doyle.
In terms of reinsurance, Doyle provided an overview of the April renewals, underlining that there is “substantial capacity to support client demand as reinsurers pursue growth.”
Looking ahead, Doyle said that early signs for June 1 Florida cat renewals “point to similar market conditions characterized by rate reductions and excess supply, as seen in January and April. There are early indications that Florida’s legal reforms will contribute to further risk-adjusted decreases.”
“Our clients are benefiting from the current market conditions, and as always, we continue to advise them on designing the best risk programs aligned to their goals,” said Doyle.
