Canadian commercial insurance buyers have access to more capacity and more room to negotiate than they have had in years, and they are well positioned to use some of their savings to strengthen their resilience, according to James Gasco (pictured), head of Canada at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions.
Pricing and other terms & conditions are more favourable for buyers, Gasco told Insurance Business, but the softening market hasn’t changed the risks that clients are exposed to.
“The reality is that the underlying risks businesses face are not softening,” he said.
Capacity continues to flow into the country, Gasco said.
“Canada continues to be an attractive market for capital, and we’ve seen that create more choice for clients,” he said.
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The easing isn’t even across all lines, he said. Risks that are heavily exposed to natural catastrophes or have a history of losses still face scrutiny.
Where clients are saving money, Gasco said, they have a chance to put it back into their protection, whether by reviewing their policy limits and deductibles or by filling gaps in traditional policies with products such as parametric cover.
“It’s given them an opportunity to reinvest some of the cost that they’ve saved and redirect it to further help build their resilience,” he said.
Gasco said it is very hard to say whether the market will bottom out next year, but that carriers still want to deploy capacity. As margins narrow, how insurers deploy it will matter more, he said.
“We’re at the point where underwriting discipline is even more critical as margins get tighter for insurers,” Gasco said.
He doesn’t expect the current conditions to shift much in the near term.
“Throughout 2027, I don’t see dramatic change,” Gasco said.
Gasco joined Swiss Re Corporate Solutions 10 years ago. Over that time, he said, the work has changed.
“It’s definitely become a much more technical business,” he said.
The baseline for severe weather has shifted, with average annual losses over the past 10 years higher than in the decade before, driven largely by exposure growth and accumulation, Gasco said.
Canadian clients’ risks are also increasingly shaped by factors outside the country, whether through cross-border and multinational operations or through supply chains that have become more complex, even for businesses based entirely in Canada.
“The world’s become more complex and the risks that our clients face are more interconnected,” he said.
Corporate buyers expect more from insurers than simply paying a claim after a loss, Gasco said.
“They’re looking for partners that can help them manage their volatility,” he said.
Clients want insurers’ view of where their vulnerabilities are and guidance on where to invest to reduce them, Gasco said. That includes risk engineering services and Swiss Re’s Risk Data & Services platform, which gives clients more risk insight into their property footprint exposures.
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They also want help identifying any gaps in their coverage, he said.
“Traditional policies will leave certain risk uninsured, and clients want to understand the boundaries of their coverage, and find solutions, including alternative risk transfer solutions, to address gaps where possible,” Gasco said.
Gasco, who previously worked as a broker, said that kind of partnership takes time and strong engagement to gain deep understanding of the client. He said the relationship between brokers and insurers is shifting toward a shared purpose.
“It’s moving away from a purely transactional view of a placement at renewal and moving much more towards ‘How do we work together to solve our clients’ risk problems’,” he said.
The two sides complement each other, Gasco said.
“You’ve got broker advocacy and benchmarking paired with insurers’ underwriting expertise and capacity,” he said.
The technology platforms that brokers and insurers use are evolving quickly, Gasco said, and this should allow for more time spent working together on clients’ problems.
“It's about reducing the administrative burden and not reducing the importance of the relationships,” he said.
Brokers and clients have also come to expect that their insurers have significant decision-making authority in Canada, with client-facing teams that know the Canadian market and understand Canadian business needs, while also being backed by global capabilities when needed, Gasco said.
Gasco said the biggest opportunity for commercial insurers lies in the wave of projects now under way across the country, from construction through to operations, in sectors including critical minerals, social infrastructure, data centres, power generation and energy. Insurers can bring the risk data and expertise that help make those projects financeable, he said.
“I think there’s great opportunity to insure the next investment cycle in Canada,” Gasco said.
The challenge will be keeping a growing set of interconnected risks insurable, he said. When many clients share exposure to certain supply chains or the same cloud services, one event can ripple through and drive a larger impact, which makes data on risk and accumulation critical.
“The more we can understand that, the better we’re going to be able to deploy capacity in a sustainable way to meet our clients' needs,” Gasco said.
