Brokers renewing UK employers' liability, public liability or products liability business with CNA Hardy this quarter are dealing with a carrier that has more room to compete than the group's US headlines suggest. CNA Financial's second-quarter results, published this week, show its International segment, which contains CNA Hardy's Lloyd's syndicate and UK company-market operation at 20 Fenchurch Street, posting a 2% dip in net written premium and continued rate softening. At the same time, the group as a whole was still pushing hard for more price on US casualty business.
Taken at face value, the group's top-line renewal figures suggest a carrier tightening up. The segment detail tells a different story for UK casualty buyers.
For brokers dealing with CNA Hardy on UK liability risks, the practical takeaway is straightforward: this looks like a carrier with room to compete on UK and European casualty business, not one retreating from it. The 2% dip in International net written premium looks like the natural consequence of pricing down in a soft market, rather than any pullback in appetite. CNA's own commentary attributes the segment's margin pressure to continued investment in staff and technology, not to claims experience or reserve strain.
It's also worth being precise about which "CNA is holding firm on casualty rate" you're reading. The rate that's hardening sits almost entirely in the group's US book. A broker who takes CNA's global renewal premium change at face value into a London market negotiation is working from the wrong number.
CNA's core income, the figure insurers use once investment swings are stripped out, dipped to $324 million from $335 million a year earlier, even as net income rose to $321 million from $299 million. A strong quarter for the group's investment portfolio masked softer underwriting. The property and casualty combined ratio worsened to 96.5% from 94.1%, and the underlying combined ratio, which also strips out catastrophe losses and reserve movements, rose 2.5 points to 94.2%.
Chairman and chief executive Douglas Worman described it as the trade-off you'd expect from a carrier trying to grow without abandoning discipline, telling investors the group still saw "tremendous opportunities" to write business at the right price while pulling back where conditions demanded it. That holds up as a summary of the group's overall P&C book. It doesn't hold up once you look at the segments separately.
CNA's own release spells out the split. Renewal rate was flat overall, but that figure nets off a still-firm increase in US casualty against rate decreases in property, workers' compensation and the International segment. Within Commercial, the underlying combined ratio jumped 2.2 points to 92.8%, driven by excess casualty and workers' compensation losses running hotter than the rest of the book. Within International, the underlying combined ratio rose further still, up 3.3 points to 94.7%, but for a different reason: expense growth from continued investment in talent and technology, not the reserve strain hitting the US casualty account. Net written premium in International fell 2% for the quarter, or 3% once currency movement is stripped out.
CNA is pushing for more rate on US casualty because US casualty claims keep getting more expensive. It is easing off in the UK and Europe because claims costs there aren't rising at anything like the same pace.
That isn't a CNA-specific pattern. Marsh's UK Insurance Rates data shows UK casualty rates falling in recent quarters, with insurer capacity ample enough that new entrants are still coming into the market. Aon's UK market commentary goes further, noting that well-managed casualty accounts that hadn't been remarketed for a few years achieved savings of more than 30% at renewal in late 2025, with carriers competing on flexible terms as well as price. Insurance Business covered the same split in July, when Gallagher Re's facultative market data showed UK and international casualty rates dropping between 5% and 25% in the first half of 2026, even as US casualty facultative business tightened to the point where only a handful of traditional reinsurers were still actively writing it.
Social inflation, the combination of rising jury awards, third-party litigation funding and climbing legal defence costs, is overwhelmingly a US phenomenon in scale. It shows up in CNA's loss ratio on the Commercial side, where the US exposure sits, and barely touches the International book. That's the underlying reason CNA can soften in the UK while holding firm at home.
Worth ruling out separately: the $77 million after-tax charge tied to legacy mass tort exposure, the second year running CNA has taken a charge of broadly similar size for the same issue, down slightly from $88 million a year earlier. This sits in run-off business outside the trading segments entirely, the kind of charge that turns up periodically at carriers with older, US-heavy long-tail books. It says nothing about current underwriting capacity in the UK operation. CNA's record new business figure for the quarter is a far better guide to where the carrier is actually trying to grow.
