The A.M. Best Company, with a grant from WSIA and the Derek Hughes/NAPSLO Educational Foundation, released its annual Best's Special Report and took a close look at surplus lines in the U.S.
For the 13th year in a row, the surplus lines industry reported no financially impaired companies, in contrast to the admitted property & casualty industry's 223 known financial impairments over this time period.
Although A.M. Best's outlook for the P&C industry's commercial lines market is currently negative, its view of the surplus lines segment is stable based on the expectation that surplus lines insurers will remain rational in terms of pricing, exhibiting the type of discipline during the most competitive portions of the market cycle, which has historically allowed the market to outperform the overall P&C market.
As the saying goes, the devil is in the details — and there are plenty in this report. One detail to highlight is Shanghai-based Fosun International Ltd. acquiring Meadowbrook Insurance Group in July 2015; as a result, Fosun U.S. Group entered the top 10 U.S. surplus lines groups in 2016.
The rankings reflect surplus lines by direct premiums written (in $000s) and total surplus lines market share.
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