Angela Yeo and Mahesh Mistry, who run analytics work out of AM Best’s London office, say the drift toward localised reinsurance rules isn’t stopping at emerging economies anymore.
It’s creeping into developed markets, and according to our data that shift already nudges global carriers into awkward corners.
Both spoke with AM Best TV during the group’s London briefings, where protectionist pressure kept surfacing in side conversations.
Mistry opened the discussion by pointing out that insurers spent decades riding the upside of open borders. Globalization let carriers write business across regions without the old trade barriers that throttled cross-border policy flows.
Some firms expanded so quickly that they now pull in double-digit bn in premiums, which seemed unthinkable when national markets felt sealed off.
This international reach didn’t just help with growth – it spread risk across multiple markets, which meant a single country shock didn’t floor an entire book.
Yeo stepped in with a colder read on the current mood. We aren’t only seeing reinsurance placement rules inside frontier markets anymore; developed economies have begun sliding into the same approach. Governments push requirements that force insurers to cede risk locally, even when the local reinsurance market doesn’t have the depth to absorb it.
The result feels messy: less freedom to spread exposures, property and casualty clusters that tighten inside single jurisdictions, and operating costs that jump because firms must juggle additional compliance layers.
According to Beinsure, once the ability to trade risk across borders weakens, the whole pricing chain starts to creak.
When asked about emerging risks, Mistry didn’t hesitate. He said insurers live in a world where nothing sits still. Elections shift, governments change direction, and polarization spills into geopolitical friction.
That tension feeds uncertainty into underwriting models. Climate shifts run alongside these political swings, and temperatures keep rising – melting ice caps, sea-level creep, biodiversity loss.
It hits frequency modelling, severity projections, you name it. Maybe even litigation patterns, because climate disputes keep ramping up and won’t ease off soon.
He added that the United States still drives the most aggressive litigation trends, though bits of that culture leak into European courts. This trickles into claims inflation.
Then you’ve got oddball but fast-moving issues like crypto use, carbon credits, and scientific breakthroughs that insurance teams struggle to price because historical data doesn’t help much.
Yeo closed the conversation with a reminder that risk bundles don’t live in silos anymore. Tech shocks mingle with climate impacts; geopolitical surprises spill into supply chains; cyber hits disrupt physical operations.
40 years ago, insurers didn’t track this type of cross-connected risk web, but now it defines the job. She argued that the industry, despite all the noise, stays nimble enough to experiment – we’ve seen carriers build new placement routes when old ones lock up, and some of that creativity kept the global market moving through the last two years.
She didn’t paint a rosy picture, but she did say the opportunities aren’t gone. Insurers just need to keep adjusting, even when the rulebook around them keeps shifting mid-game.
