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Enriched vehicle data central to Motor Insurance Pricing

In 2023, the conversation in the motor insurance market was dominated by record premium costs[i], intense shopping activity and fierce competition for customers. By the end of 2025, the picture looked quite different. Premium inflation had eased through much of 2025, shopping and switching had levelled off, and consumers appeared more willing to stay with their existing insurance provider. However, the latest LexisNexis® Insurance Demand Meter U.K. for H2 2025, alongside ABI data showing a record £3.2 billion paid out to support motor insurance claims in Q2 2026[ii].
Posted on Wednesday Sep 16

Building Sovereign Disaster Resilience

Gerry Lemcke and Marina Oberholzer explore how innovative risk-transfer solutions can strengthen countries’ financial resilience to natural disasters. Lemcke and Oberholzer trace the evolution of Public Sector Solutions back to 2011, when Swiss Re became the first reinsurer to establish a dedicated unit to work with governments on their risk-mitigation and risk-transfer needs. Now, the toolbox to address these needs is expanding: Lemcke and Oberholzer discuss insurance-linked loans, which embed disaster protection into sovereign financing. When a qualifying disaster strikes, an insurer takes over the loan payments, providing real debt relief and freeing up public funds to be used for recovery instead.
Posted on Tuesday Sep 15

Pension savers need more support at retirement

Whether it is a defined contribution occupational pension scheme, subject to trustee fiduciary duty, or a workplace personal pension, subject to consumer duty, the challenges facing members, and the support they need to make good decisions are the same. The Pension Commission has highlighted many of the issues facing members both in building an adequate pension pot and in converting that pot into a retirement income.
Posted on Tuesday Sep 15

How to manage cyber risk as a strategic imperative

If a ransomware event shuts down a critical system, your board will focus on operations, revenue and recovery long before it discusses the technical vulnerability that led to the incident. Which operations and supplier relationships can continue? Which customers will feel the impact and what will this do to revenues? What will it take to recover, should you pay the ransom and how much will the business interruption cost otherwise?
Posted on Monday Sep 14

Soft markets, AI and next steps for London Market pricing

The twin impacts of softening markets and AI mean that London Market pricing teams will need to evolve their approach rapidly over the coming years. In this article I look at the current state of the market, highlight examples of good practice and consider key areas where firms need to evolve. Most firms in the London Market have well-established technical pricing processes. However, the role of technical pricing has been somewhat limited in hard markets, where the priority is to maximise underwriting team bandwidth to capture the abundant opportunities to write profitable business.
Posted on Friday Sep 11

Flood risk in changing climate: What risk managers must know

Flood risks are not restricted to those places labelled as flood zones. Neil Gunn and Hayley Fowler look at why flooding can occur well beyond mapped flood areas and suggest how risk managers can avoid being taken unaware. This year’s flood events illustrate the accelerating trend of hydrological intensification driven by ongoing global warming. A preliminary global review shows extreme and often record-breaking rainfall on every continent, with many events producing exceptional sub-daily intensities.
Posted on Thursday Sep 10

DB endgame options: when strategy meets accounting reality

As funding levels improve, sponsors are exploring a broader range of endgame options than ever before. While strategic discussions often focus on risk, funding and member outcomes, understanding the accounting implications of each option is becoming an increasingly important part of the decision-making process. While the strategic benefits are clear, the accounting implications can be complex and the impact significant. In some cases, the accounting standards may appear misaligned with intended strategic outcomes and UK policy objectives.
Posted on Wednesday Sep 9

Insurance as a strategic enabler of business growth

Growth is built on making bold decisions. But as businesses grow, so does the potential cost of an unexpected event. Insurance is not only there to respond when something goes wrong; it helps provide the financial confidence to keep moving forward when challenges arise. Yet insurance is often viewed as a transactional purchase rather than a strategic business tool. In reality, a well-structured insurance programme sits at the heart of an effective risk management strategy.
Posted on Tuesday Sep 8

A question of surplus

Stronger funding positions and the Government's proposed surplus reforms mean more trustee boards and sponsors are thinking about a question that would have seemed unlikely a decade ago: what should happen when there is money left over? Even where a scheme has completed an insurance transaction and members' benefits are secure, agreeing how any remaining surplus should be used is rarely straightforward. The sums involved can be significant, and trustees and sponsors may have different views on the most appropriate outcome.
Posted on Monday Sep 7

Infectious disease and what COVID19 revealed in insurability

COVID-19 revealed the systemic nature of pandemic risk, exposing gaps in insurability and showing why foresight must translate into sustained preparedness and resilience. A 2020 global pandemic showed that infectious disease is not just a public health risk, but a systemic shock that challenges the foundations of insurability in an interconnected world. In the years leading up to COVID-19, pandemic risk was not invisible. It appeared in national risk registers, academic research and scenario exercises, and had been considered by some organisations and risk specialists.
Posted on Friday Sep 4

Insuring an income in retirement

You don’t need to work in insurance to appreciate its value. Most of us will take out insurance over our lifetime to provide compensation for when bad things happen. If we lose our phone, crash our car, our house is lost to fire we can receive compensation that helps us get back on our feet. When it comes to our health we can insure against ill health, and if the worst happens, life insurance is designed to pay out an amount to our loved ones if we were to die.
Posted on Thursday Sep 3

September 2026 Edition of the Actuarial Post Magazine

Our cover story comes from Lisa Balboa and Jessica Plewes from WTW examining some of the biggest changes that are happening in Health Insurance. Charl Cronje from LCP returns casting a look at the latest trends in London Market pricing. As usual our regular authors are in attendance bringing their viewpoints on events. We also had the start of an event with the launch of our nominations for Stars of the Future sponsored by Star Actuarial Futures.
Posted on Wednesday Sep 2

Planning to make your holiday permanent?

With many Brits returning from their summer holidays dreaming of making the move abroad permanent, Standard Life is warning that where retirees choose to live could have a major impact on their retirement income. While the UK State Pension can usually still be paid overseas, whether payments continue to increase each year depends on the country you live in and the specific arrangements the UK has in place. In some cases this is linked to reciprocal social security agreements, although not all such agreements provide for annual State Pension upratings.
Posted on Tuesday Sep 1

2026 Natural catastrophe losses Europe heatwaves and El Niño

Global insured natural catastrophe losses reached an estimated USD 42 billion in the first half of 2026, well below the long-term trend. But does a quieter first half mean lower risk? Balz Grollimund, Head of Catastrophe Perils & Property at Swiss Re, looks at the key trends shaping natural catastrophe risk in 2026, from severe convective storms and Europe’s record heat and rising wildfire risk to the outlook for the North Atlantic hurricane season.
Posted on Tuesday Sep 1

Insuring physical AI: Robotics reshaping risk and liability

As AI moves from software into the physical world, risk evolves. Physical AI introduces new questions around liability, governance and insurability for organizations and insurers. For the past two years, most discussion around AI has focused on software. However, the next wave of AI will move beyond the screen and into the physical world. From early warehouse deployments to emerging eldercare applications and autonomous systems operating in public spaces, the scope of physical AI is expanding rapidly fundamentally changing both opportunity and risk.
Posted on Thursday Aug 27

Demystifying life actuarial technology

MCP connects AI agents to tools and data, while agent-to-agent architectures let specialist AI systems collaborate, helping make actuarial technology more automated, scalable and accessible. Just as the insurance industry has begun to understand Generative AI and Agentic AI, another set of technologies has emerged that promises to make AI systems much more useful in practice. These are multi-agent systems or agent-to-agent communication, and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Posted on Tuesday Aug 25

Why salary sacrifice remains a powerful tool in DC pensions

The proposed cap on salary sacrifice contributions for workplace pension savers caused more concern than may have been warranted. The annual threshold for such contributions will be set at £2,000 from April 2029 as outlined by the chancellor. But besides this being three years away, even once it has been implemented, salary sacrifice will still possess tax-efficient benefits. That means employers should continue to educate their workers on its merits.
Posted on Monday Aug 24

New investment paradigm: Navigating a world in transition

The world isn't facing a series of isolated shocks. It's experiencing a structural transition and investors need to build portfolios that can thrive in The New Paradigm. Rising geopolitical uncertainty, fracturing trade alliances, inflation volatility, technological disruption and mounting pressure on active management are not isolated challenges. At WTW, we view them as interconnected symptoms of a structural shift: a transition away from neoliberal economic order towards something fundamentally different, a more transformative economic model and an increasingly mercantile world.
Posted on Friday Aug 21

Stars of the Future 2026 - Nominate Now!

Actuarial Post are delighted to open our 2026 Awards by inviting nominations for Stars Of The Future 2026. You can now nominate someone for Stars of the Future 2026, sponsored by Star Actuarial Futures. It’s vital to remember that we all started somewhere and becoming an actuary is no easy feat. We relish acknowledging the emerging talent within the actuarial market and celebrate the ones to watch with our Stars of the Future Awards. All the finalists are celebrated and highlighted with three lucky winners taking home an award
Posted on Wednesday Aug 19

The power of compound growth

We know about it, we talk about it all the time (at least in the retirement savings world!) but because of the way our brains are wired and the mental gymnastics required to really get our head around the power of compounding, the reality (cliched or not) is that we persistently undervalue its true potential. Our brains are hard wired to think in linear terms and therefore the exponential growth available with compounding does not naturally compute for us. We assume saving more later roughly compensates for saving less earlier.
Posted on Tuesday Aug 18

It’s the I of the RR

There are a lot of ways IRRs can be manipulated – for instance by using subscription lines – and its important investors know about these. It’s important to look under the hood of any returns before being overly impressed by a high IRR. But suppose you do all that, and you have a manager who called capital early and got invested well, the IRR reflects the returns you earned, so surely it must be telling you what you earned? Well, maybe. But maybe not, as it still has several issues. For example, if there’s any bias to selling winners early, the IRR will look higher than any returns.
Posted on Monday Aug 17

Your organization is investing in AI, where’s the value?

Most organizations are investing heavily in AI but not realizing its full value. Real impact depends on whether people adopt new ways of working and whether those changes improve performance at scale. Most organizations have moved quickly to put AI in employees’ hands. Investments have surged, tools are live and usage is climbing. The 2026 WTW Global EX Market Study found 58% of employers expect AI to fundamentally change how the employee experience is managed in the next three years, rising to 91% within ten years.
Posted on Friday Aug 14

Human rights risks: the implications for long-term investors

Human rights can feel difficult to discuss in an investment context, because they concern how people are treated, protected and valued. While human rights violations raise important ethical considerations, a question for asset owners is the extent to which these issues are also financially material. In this article, we explore how human rights failures can contribute to litigation, regulatory penalties, operational disruption, reputational damage and other consequences that may affect the long-term value of investments.
Posted on Thursday Aug 13

The data gap driving up Chinese EV insurance premiums

Electric vehicles (EV) now make up 30%[i] of new cars and Chinese brands 10%[ii]. Makes and models virtually unknown here five years ago are now posting serious sales numbers with the Jaecoo 7 breaking into the top five best-selling car brands in the country[iii]. With fuel costs elevated and household budgets under sustained pressure, affordable EVs from Chinese manufacturers are becoming an increasingly attractive option for UK consumers.
Posted on Wednesday Aug 12

2015: The growing challenge of heat in Europe's cities

The 2015 European heatwave highlighted the human and economic costs of extreme heat. WRN-supported research explores parametric finance and nature-based solutions to help cities adapt. In the summer of 2015, an atmospheric omega block settled over Europe and refused to move. These slow-moving high-pressure systems trap hot air like a lid, letting temperatures build for days or weeks. Across much of western Europe, temperatures climbed 7°C above seasonal norms. In Britain alone, more than 9,200 deaths were attributed to the heat.
Posted on Tuesday Aug 11