Rates

While executives remained upbeat about property rates through 2023, commentary surrounding casualty rates were a bit more cautious, especially on the public D&O space.

The market has quickly moved away from dramatic hardening in 2020 and 2021 following an influx of capacity.

The Hanover expects its 2023 ex-cat CoR to be in the 91%-92% range, driven by rate adjustments and changes in personal auto frequency.

It was the smallest quarterly price increase since Q1 2019.

Chubb’s balanced view of the market as a whole, and pricing and loss cost trends in particular, puts it ahead of the curve on value creation, despite a difficult economic backdrop.

The latest move marks a deceleration from December’s 50 basis-point hike, which followed four consecutive increases of 75 basis points.

The CEO also told analysts there is currently no M&A on the table for Chubb.

Broker and commercial carrier trends align on economic indicators but diverge on stock performance and 2023 consensus estimates.

This was the highest single-year increase for the US index since 2006.

Established players are walking away from writing IPO, SPAC and de-SPAC accounts as increased capacity and falling demand in the sub-class causes rates to crater.

The executive noted that the quarter marked the 21st quarter of rate increases.

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