Our LinkedIn poll this week asked brokers a blunt question: is the UK insurance market working for them right now? Of 38 votes, the largest group, 50%, said it depends on the line of business, ahead of "broadly working" (34%), "getting harder" (11%) and "better than last year" (5%).
It is a small, self-selected sample rather than a substitute for wider market data, so we spoke to two independent brokers to see how closely the results reflected what they are seeing in the market.
Charlie Hicks (pictured left), managing director at EIC Insurance Services, agreed that the answer depends heavily on the class of business being placed.
"It can at times feel like the Wild West, whereby certain lines of business, understandably, rate has come down because it needed to," he told Insurance Business UK. "It's kind of started to level out. But there are a few insurers that have had some fantastic results, and that's been reflected in the rating of their premiums over probably the last year."
He does not expect that unevenness to disappear soon. "I'm probably not alone in thinking it's probably going to be the case for the foreseeable future as well."
Martin Castleton (pictured right), managing director at independent broker Aureum Insurance, pointed to reductions across much of the market, albeit without dramatic movements, with professional indemnity (PI) one class he expects could buck the trend.
"It's not massive, significant rating reductions, but pretty much every class – PI is probably the only one that's looking like it's going to go up soon, but motor has come down, property's come down, liabilities come down," he said. "So I'd say very much it's coming down but stable."
After 25 years in insurance, Castleton also questioned whether broad labels such as "soft" and "hard" accurately reflect what brokers experience across individual classes, describing the framing as "a little bit of a myth."
"I think it will be single-digit increases up and down forever, and I think that's just the market," he said. "I've never really seen anything dramatic except the PI problems we had of 2021."
The wider market data supports what Hicks and Castleton describe. Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index put UK composite commercial rates down 8% in the first quarter of 2026, with property down 10%. But individual classes continue to move in different directions: casualty pricing has ticked upward on US-linked exposures, while general aviation is hardening for higher-risk operators even as capacity remains abundant elsewhere, a divergence WTW has described as a structural shift beneath the general aviation market.
Brokers surveyed for IBUK's recent piece on the soft cycle's plateau expect the market to reach that point around the fourth quarter of 2026.
Pricing isn't the only pressure that looks different from broker to broker, though. Castleton said Consumer Duty hasn't changed how his brokerage operates day to day. "I don't think anything's changed in that sense," he said. "I think we're still very much doing what we've always done."
That unevenness sits alongside a record year for property losses. The Association of British Insurers recorded £6.1 billion in UK property claims payouts for 2025even as property rates continue to soften. Meanwhile, underinsurance remains a problem for UK commercial buildings as construction inflation and rebuild costs add to the pressure, another indication that falling rates do not necessarily reflect falling risk.
Castleton's scepticism about the soft/hard label may explain why "it depends" comfortably topped IBUK's poll. A softer overall market does not necessarily mean every broker is seeing the same conditions, or even that every client within the same brokerage is benefiting equally.
For brokers, the more useful question may therefore be less whether the UK market is working and more where it is working. Pricing, capacity and insurer appetite are producing different answers depending on the class of business being placed.
The 50% of respondents who chose "it depends" appear to be experiencing exactly that. If your experience this year differs significantly by class of business, IBUK wants to hear the detail behind it for a future piece.
