A tightening of terms and conditions around cyber and communicable diseases continued through 2021. Barents Re strongly supported standard market exclusions on all policies to avoid unintended exposures.

2021 was another heavy year for catastrophe losses in the Property market, with events such as the European floods hitting many re/insurers hard. As a result, the appetite for high catastrophe exposed areas is decreasing, and re/insurers are limiting their line sizes, restricting coverage, and demanding higher premiums to compensate for the increased risk. Barents Re continues to take a conservative approach to catastrophe risk and diligently models its exposures to ensure they are carefully managed.

There is an ongoing requirement from the UK Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) for the London market to focus on profitability and underwriting discipline to address previous poor performance. Therefore, capacity for historically underperforming occupancies remains low, especially for significant fire risk exposed classes like woodworking and recycling. As a result, carriers are increasingly focused on the quality of the risks rather than just the top line, with particular attention paid to risk management attitudes and proven loss records.

The outlook for 2022 is positive, as although rate increases have slowed, they are not yet flattening, and Barents Re continues to seek opportunities to grow, while maintaining our focus on principled underwriting to develop our portfolio of high-quality, diversely spread risks with favorable loss records.