Insurers expect property reinsurance prices to fall further in 2027, according to the latest reinsurance buyers survey from Moody’s Ratings, the credit rating agency.
Moody’s polling of cedents found that around 38% anticipate portfolio-wide property reinsurance pricing to fall between 7.5% and 15% next year, while almost a fifth expect declines of more than 15%. This follows a year in which prices already fell by double digits during the 2026 renewals.
According to Moody’s, most respondents to its previous survey had correctly predicted that property reinsurance prices would fall in 2026, but generally underestimated how steep those declines would be.
Despite this year’s significant softening, Moody’s notes that reinsurers remain able to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns from property business, a dynamic it expects will continue to fuel competition heading into the 2027 renewals. Moody’s cautioned, however, that these pricing expectations could shift quickly should a major catastrophe occur before the January renewal season.
For property reinsurance, 86% of respondents to the 2026 survey expected prices to fall in the year ahead, up from 74% who said the same in the 2025 survey, pointing to a consensus around continued softening in the property market.
On the casualty side, Moody’s found sentiment has turned somewhat more negative among primary insurers, though views remain mixed. Its data shows that in the 2026 survey, 43% of respondents expected casualty prices to decline, compared with 37% who expected increases, the first time in several years that more cedents anticipated falls than rises.
Moody’s points out that this picture varies considerably by region: US primary insurers generally continue to expect casualty prices to rise, while insurers outside the US are more inclined to expect declines.
Moody’s attributes the divergence to persistently high loss cost trends in the US, whereas outside the US, expectations of falling prices are said to reflect a view that ample property reinsurance capacity will increasingly spill over into casualty markets, sharpening competition and putting downward pressure on rates. Moody’s adds that the eventual scale of any pricing movement will depend on individual insurers’ exposures and claims experience.
