Ninety percent of business leaders now say geopolitical tensions are limiting their growth plans, up from 68% in January 2025. Whether insurance programs have kept pace with the clients inside them is the question at the centre of a new Beazley report.
That gap is the focus of Beazley’s Spotlight on Geopolitical and Economic Uncertainty 2026, which draws on a survey of 3,500 business leaders across the US, UK, Canada, Singapore, France, Germany, and Spain, conducted in January and July 2026. The findings document a measurable, and accelerating, shift in how executives perceive operational risk, and where they expect insurance to fit. Beazley, now part of Zurich Insurance Group following the completion of a £8.1 billion acquisition on October 1, writes the lines its report identifies as most in need of review, including marine cargo, political risk, trade credit, and directors’ and officers’ liability.
Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they plan to change their suppliers or supply chains over the next 12 months in response to geopolitical pressure. Each of those changes, whether a new trade route, a different vendor, or a rerouted shipment, can alter a client’s exposure across marine cargo, political risk, business interruption, and directors’ and officers’ liability, often without a corresponding review of their coverage.
Sundeep Khera, head of marine at Beazley, said that route changes warrant the same scrutiny as cargo changes. “Longer voyages, higher values in transit and new accumulation points can materially alter the exposure,” Khera said. “Cover therefore needs to be reviewed as supply chains change, rather than only at renewal.”
That observation sits inside a broader operational picture the report traces in detail. After Iran moved to close the Strait of Hormuz in June 2026, disrupting roughly a quarter of global seaborne oil trade, many vessels began conducting “dark transits,” switching off their automatic identification system transponders to avoid detection. By August 2026, 80% of traffic through the strait was moving that way, according to Beazley’s report, which cites shipping intelligence data.
While the practice reduces some exposure, it strips shipowners, cargo owners, and insurers of live visibility at precisely the moment risk is highest. Emergency rerouting can also push cargo through uninsured or high-risk territories without anyone realising it.
Standard commercial policies may not respond to losses arising from conflict or state-backed disruption. The report flags that sanctions violations can freeze payments or shipments instantly. Aon’s Q1 2026 Global Insurance Market Insights report, published in May 2026, similarly warned that sanctions exclusions, political violence triggers, and how cyber or geopolitical events flow through to property and business interruption cover are not always obvious, and represent the priority stress-test for brokers right now.
The supply chain shift is only part of the picture. Howden’s “Opportunity in Flux” credit and political risk insurance report, published in May 2025 and the most recent available data on the market, found that demand for political risk insurance had risen by a third due to geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, yet premium growth in that market lagged well behind property and cyber lines. That gap between rising demand and slower market response means clients may be carrying exposures they assume are covered but aren’t.
The Beazley report identifies several lines where coverage review is most urgent as clients adapt their operating models. Marine cargo cover needs to factor in longer transit times, new storage hubs, and shifting cargo accumulation limits. Trade credit and political risk insurance may be needed to protect against supplier default, government expropriation, licence cancellation, or embargo. And as directors face greater scrutiny over supply chain decisions and risk oversight, D&O exposure grows alongside operational uncertainty.
Roddy Barnett, head of political risk and trade credit at Beazley, described “those moments” as the specific, unpredictable events that contingency plans cannot fully absorb. “Political risk and trade credit insurance, for example, help provide the financial stability needed to navigate those moments,” he said.
The report’s broader argument is that disruption increasingly arrives in clusters rather than in sequence. Cyber, physical, regulatory, and financial pressures can strike simultaneously, amplifying losses and eroding margins in ways that make traditional forecasting unreliable. Economic slowdown, inflation, recession, and sovereign debt concerns now rank among the top three risks for 41% of respondents, up from 34% in January 2026. Cybersecurity, including systemic attacks and third-party outages, was a top-three concern for 44%, up from 37% in January 2026, according to the report.
A separate Arch Insurance International report on the construction sector, published in September 2026, found that geopolitical instability had overtaken supply chain disruption as the leading risk facing that industry, with nearly a third of firms reconsidering or relocating projects on that basis. That is a sign that operational restructuring in response to geopolitics is already happening faster than insurance conversations are catching up.
The Beazley data reinforces that the pace of client adaptation is the underlying pressure point. Gerard Bloom, co-lead of specialty risks at Beazley, said the problem is structural. “Supply chain disruption can’t be treated as a standalone operational issue,” Bloom said. “With sanctions and tariffs being used as political leverage, the requirements can change with minimal warning. For manufacturers reliant on global supply, a single policy decision can impact sourcing, compliance, costs and operational continuity.”
Paul Bantick, chief underwriting officer at Beazley, framed the broader challenge in those terms. “No business can predict every event,” Bantick said, “but those that understand the depth of their critical dependencies and are prepared to respond quickly to change will be better placed to trade, invest and seize growth opportunities despite today’s ongoing uncertainty.”
