{"id":2319,"date":"2025-09-08T14:53:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T14:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/global-marine-premiums-hit-all-time-high-insurance-day\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T14:53:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T14:53:48","slug":"global-marine-premiums-hit-all-time-high-insurance-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/global-marine-premiums-hit-all-time-high-insurance-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Global marine premiums hit all-time high :: Insurance Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Global marine insurance premiums have hit an all-time high of almost $40bn, the International Union of Marine Insurance\u00a0(Iumi) conference has been told.<\/p>\n

The total top line for the niche increased 1.5% in 2024 to reach $39.92bn, according to a presentation given by the organisation\u2019s in-house statistician, Veith Huesmann, at the event in Singapore\u00a0on September 8.<\/p>\n

However, the downside appears to be the rate of growth is slowing down markedly from the 5.9% recorded in 2023 and 8.3% the year before that.<\/p>\n

The findings appear consonant with recent brokers\u2019 reports, which have suggested rates are softening in key marine insurance segments including cargo and hull and machinery (H&M).<\/p>\n

Cargo hung on to its traditional standing as the biggest class, accounting for 56.7% of all marine premiums, with H&M second on 24.2%. Offshore and energy brought in 10.9% of premiums and marine liability 8.2%.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Factors cited as determining premium trends include global trade activity and transaction levels; fluctuations in asset and commodity valuations; currency movements and exchange rate shifts; political and regional developments impacting stability; and supply-side dynamics including market capacity.<\/p>\n

Broken down by region, Europe is still taking the largest slice of the premium pie, although its overall share is falling, in contrast to the growth experienced by the Asia-Pacific market, particularly by Chinese underwriters. Iumi assesses this as a long-term trend and does not predict sudden change.<\/p>\n

The largest cargo markets by country are China on 17.6%; Lloyd\u2019s on 9.7%; and the US on 6.9%; Brazil and Germany, both on 4.7%, do slightly better than the London companies market on 4.3%.<\/p>\n

Asia was responsible for 60% of 2024 growth and the gap between Asia and Europe is closing.<\/p>\n

Cargo loss ratios \u2013\u00a0incurred losses and adjustment expenses divided by earned premiums \u2013\u00a0maintained their ongoing downwards trend, falling for the seventh year in succession.<\/p>\n

What seems to be happening is without one-off events, attritional losses are at a level that still attracts capital, bringing in both new players and returners. But the resultant overcapacity means increased competition in some markets.<\/p>\n

The largest hull markets are the Nordic bloc on 12.9%, China on 11.6%, Lloyd\u2019s on 8.7%, Singapore on 7.9% and London companies on 7.4%.<\/p>\n

In contrast to cargo, loss ratios are on the up, with increases in each of the past five years.<\/p>\n

Overcapacity led to the first signs of softening markets in 2024, with supply-side dynamics marked by the emergence of more managing general agents and by follow markets.<\/p>\n

Rerouting \u2013\u00a0particularly marked as shipowners give the Red Sea a swerve and head round the Cape of Good Hope instead \u2013\u00a0has meant more weather damage.<\/p>\n

Also exerting pressure are the increased age profile of the world fleet, as more owners opt to delay scrapping, and cost inflation, which is driving constructive total loss probabilities.<\/p>\n

The state of protection and indemnity (P&I) is harder to assess, following the introduction of new reporting standards by the International Group of P&I clubs, which mean fixed-premium products are no longer included, making direct past year comparisons impossible.<\/p>\n

However, market sources suggested an increase in mutual premiums of more than 3% between the 2023\/24 and 2024\/25 policy years.<\/p>\n

The UK does maintain its dominance of the global offshore energy book, with London companies taking 31.6% and Lloyd\u2019s 30%. Brazil and Mexico come in third and fourth, on 8.1% and 8% respectively. Loss ratios have been falling sharply since 2020.<\/p>\n

Iumi highlighted a \u201csignificant uptick\u201d in attritional losses, given the high demand and high use rates for offshore vessels. Continuing overcapacity is creating a soft market, with downwards pressure on premiums.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article first appeared in Lloyd\u2019s List, a sister publication of Insurance Day<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global marine insurance premiums have hit an all-time high of almost $40bn, the International Union of Marine Insurance\u00a0(Iumi) conference has been told. The total top line for the niche increased 1.5% in 2024 to reach $39.92bn, according to a presentation given by the organisation\u2019s in-house statistician, Veith Huesmann, at the event in Singapore\u00a0on September 8. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1404,164,753,301,779,11,1299,216],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-alltime","tag-day","tag-global","tag-high","tag-hit","tag-insurance","tag-marine","tag-premiums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.insuracarelife.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}