As parts of the reinsurance market, notably property catastrophe, saw prices soften further at the 1.1 2026 renewals, and with this trend expected to persist for subsequent 2026 renewals, reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter will have headwinds, but management also sees ample opportunity for growth in the months ahead.
Guy Carpenter, the reinsurance broking division of Marsh, had a strong 2025 with revenues of $2.5 billion, an increase of 6% on the prior year supported by a solid end to the year with Q4 revenues of $215 million.
Despite the robust result, during a recently held earnings call, executives at Guy Carpenter and Marsh were questioned on the outlook for the reinsurance business in light of accelerated softening, particularly within property, and how this could impact potential organic growth for Guy Carpenter.
“We had a decent finish to the year in a good year overall at Guy Carpenter, in what was a soft market last year. And so, we expected a challenging market into 2026, and certainly the first of the year would indicate that we’re getting kind of what we expected,” said John Doyle, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Marsh.
He went on to note that this is of course good for the firm’s cedent clients, so buyers of reinsurance, adding that Guy Carpenter has seen demand increase in some spots, which was less evident last year.
“So, we’re excited about that, but we’re also focused on some different areas to advise clients on in the reinsurance and capital space,” said Doyle.
Dean Klisura, President and CEO of Guy Carpenter, also responded to the question, emphasising that the property cat rate environment, alongside the interest rate landscape, will certainly be a headwind for the company as it moves through 2026.
However, Klisura remains “really upbeat” on the fundamentals of Guy Carpenter, with both its talent and capabilities.
“Our data and analytics platform is a key differentiator. We continue to attract top talent at GC. We’ve grown our head count for five years in a row and made some really big time hires in the marketplace that are making an impact on the business. Despite all this… we had record new business in 2025 and a really strong fourth quarter of new business, and we feel good about that momentum,” said Klisura.
The CEO continued, highlighting numerous potential tailwinds, including diverse areas of new business.
“I’ve spoken in the past about capital and advisory, our investment banking group, never more impactful for our clients, given the flow of third-party capital into the marketplace right now. I highlighted that in data centers. We’re winning impactful engagements from our clients around M&A advisory, raising third-party capital, fairness opinions. You’ve read a lot about sidecars, billions of dollars of new capital flowing into the market for the creation of casualty sidecars. We’re right in the middle of that. A lot of client interest, as you know, around Lloyd’s platforms, quite a bit written about that. Structured solutions. Obviously a red hot cat bond market. So, there’s a lot to kind of think about,” said Klisura.
Additionally, Klisura described the casualty market as a “clear growth opportunity for brokers and reinsurers.”
“Even though renewal outcomes were in line with expectations, we think this is a true area of growth. Martin talked about 19% rate increases in casualty in the fourth quarter. That’s flowing straight through to quota share contracts in our portfolio, which is the majority of our portfolio. You think about casualty sidecars, third-party capital, everything happening in the casualty world, we’re seeing strong growth in our casualty portfolio at 1.1. So, we think we have plenty of sources of new business growth and opportunities for growth that maybe didn’t even exist a year ago,” he said.
Doyle added: “We will have headwinds, obviously, for the pricing market in property cat, but lots of areas of growth for us to get focused on.”
One area of opportunity for Guy Carpenter and the Marsh group concerns the emergence and rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, data centres and digital infrastructure more broadly, which were discussed at length during the call, including by Klisura with a view to how Guy Carpenter is supporting the wider Marsh effort in this space.
“This is a significant new business opportunity in 2026 for both cedents and reinsurers,” said Klisura. “There’s been estimates of up to $10 billion of new premium entering the market in 2026 because of these opportunities, and the market needs more capacity. No cedents are going to put up billions of dollars of capacity for a single location risk. So, that’s a real issue. All of our clients want to write data centres across 10 plus products globally, but they require additional reinsurance protections. Everybody’s concerned with accumulations in portfolios, and we’re solving that right now for our clients. And I think we need to bring new capital to the market. It’s not going to just be traditional reinsurance capital, the introduction of third-party capital and securitising some of these risks via sidecars and other vehicles is going to be critical, and these are going to have to be deep pocketed investors, given the size of these risks. But we think this is the single biggest new business opportunity in 2026.”
