Brokers placing commercial property risk, particularly in categories such as warehousing, battery storage and buildings using newew sustainable construction materials, may be operating in a market where insurers are working with an increasingly incomplete picture of actual loss activity.
The Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters (CILA) has identified a decline in submissions to the RISCAuthority Large Loss Database, the industry's central source of UK fire and flood claims data, even as wildfire and other fire risks intensify.
Underwriters price conservatively when they cannot see clear trend lines. If insurers and RISCAuthority lack visibility into how frequently and severely emerging risks such as lithium-ion battery fires or fires involving sustainable construction materials are occurring, the likely response is not more generous terms but the opposite -- tighter conditions, higher premiums, or reduced capacity, even for clients with a strong claims history.
For brokers, that can translate into harder conversations with clients on renewal, particularly for risks that fall into newer or less well-understood categories.
Loss adjusters have historically logged at least 500 large loss cases annually to the database, but submissions dipped in 2023 and 2024, despite losses continuing to occur and, by some measures, growing in severity, according to CILA.
The data gap comes as the UK experiences one of its most severe wildfire seasons on record. Natural England's Fire Severity Index rated parts of the Midlands, East and Southeast England, and London as facing "exceptional" risk, the highest of the index's five levels, during July 2026, according to reporting at the time.
That followed 2025, already the UK's worst year for wildfires on record, with more than 47,000 hectares burnt and 181 fires larger than 30 hectares, surpassing the previous record set in 2019, per data compiled on the 2025 UK wildfires.
Fire and rescue services have responded to numerous moorland and heathland blazes across England and Wales this year, with major incidents declared in areas including Derbyshire and North Wales.
The RISCAuthority Large Loss Database pools UK fire and flood claims data on behalf of the insurance industry. It plays a role in identifying emerging risk trends and shaping fire safety research, and provides an evidence base that insurers and fire safety bodies can use when engaging with government on building regulations and fire and rescue service policy.
"This summer's wildfire activity is a timely reminder of how quickly fire risk, for example, can escalate and evolve," said Paul Redington, deputy chair of CILA's Property Special Interest Group. "The insurance industry's ability to understand and respond to that and other risks depends in part on the quality and completeness of the data it has to work with. Loss adjusters are often the first professionals on site after a major fire or flood, and the detail captured assists in shaping the guidance and regulation that helps protect lives and property in the future. We're asking adjusters to ensure that they make submission a routine part of every qualifying claim."
The call follows a significant relaunch of the database. In July, RISCAuthority introduced a simplified version of the platform, cutting it from more than 400 datapoints to around 40, with a sharper focus on emerging risks such as lithium-ion battery related fires and those involving sustainable construction materials.
Any commercial property claim exceeding £100,000, or involving a fatality, qualifies for submission.
For brokers, the choice of focus areas is itself useful intelligence. It signals where the market expects the next wave of commercial property claims activity to concentrate, and where underwriting scrutiny is likely to increase.
Brokers placing risk in warehousing, EV infrastructure, battery storage or new-build commercial property using sustainable materials would do well to treat the relaunch as an early indicator rather than a background administrative change.
Brokers are not the ones submitting data to the database; that responsibility sits with loss adjusters. But brokers are the ones fielding client questions when terms tighten or capacity dries up for a particular building type or risk category.
Understanding that part of the cause may be a data visibility gap, rather than pure risk aversion on the part of insurers, is useful context when explaining market hardening to clients, and when making the case for individual risk assessment rather than blanket restriction.
Whether the simplified system succeeds in reversing the submissions decline may become clearer as the 2026 wildfire season, already one of the most severe on record, continues to unfold.
