WTW has become the official insurance partner of the Barclays Women's Super League and WSL2 under a new multi-year partnership with WSL Football, with a central aim of co-creating an insurance solution designed specifically for players across both leagues.
Over the course of the partnership, WTW will work with WSL Football and clubs from both leagues to explore solutions supporting female athletes, with the tailored player insurance product intended to transform how players are protected financially throughout their careers.
For players, that cover is designed to protect earnings and provide financial security in the event of injury or illness. For clubs, it is intended to protect their investment in players' contracts.
The rationale for tailored cover sits in genuine physiological and epidemiological differences between male and female footballers.
Peer-reviewed research published in 2025 found female soccer players face 2.79 times higher ACL injury incidence than male players, while a separate 2026 review found female players sustain ACL injuries at rates two to nine times higher than men across multiple study cohorts, predominantly through non-contact mechanisms during cutting, pressing or landing movements.
Female players also face a documented risk of miscarriage linked to sporting accidents, a risk category with no male equivalent and one that has historically sat outside standard personal accident cover entirely.
That gap has already been the subject of concrete industry action. Insurance Business UK reported in March 2026 that the British Insurance Brokers' Association was coordinating major brokers including Aon, Willis, Miller, Howden and Marsh to review existing policy wordings for female footballers following the Carney Review, with Aon having already extended its personal accident policies to include miscarriage resulting from a sporting accident as standard.
That work sat alongside other Carney Review-driven changes, including a WSL minimum salary and formal PFA representation for WSL and Championship players, both of which feed directly into insurers' assessment of contractual stability and long-term disability risk.
The scale of underinsurance in women's football has been a known issue in the broking market for some time. Insurance Business UK reported back in 2022 that while top male Premier League players commonly insure themselves for £10 million to £20 million relative to income, the largest personal accident sum insured then arranged for a female footballer was £1 million, with most female players covering themselves for between £100,000 and £300,000. That gap reflected the game's commercial immaturity at the time rather than any difference in underlying risk, and has narrowed only gradually as broadcast deals, sponsorship and player earnings in the WSL have grown.
WTW's move lands amid a wider recalibration of how insurers think about women's sport specifically. Insurance Business UK has separately reported that the creation of Women's Professional Leagues Limited, the commercial entity now overseeing the WSL and Women's Championship, is expected to streamline development of the sport further, with lawyers and brokers alike noting that rapid commercial growth is bringing closer scrutiny of coverage gaps across women's football, rugby and other fast-growing women's sports.
That recalibration also fits a broader pattern in personal accident and income protection more generally. Separate Insurance Business UK reporting found combined group and individual protection claims hit a record £8 billion in 2024, with football remaining the UK's top sports injury claim category even at the recreational level, against a backdrop where the Financial Conduct Authority estimates 58% of UK adults hold no pure protection product at all.
Zarah Al-Kudcy, chief revenue officer at WSL Football, said ensuring the right protection and support is in place for players during their careers, and for clubs, is an important part of building a truly professional and sustainable game. She said WTW's specialist expertise and people-first approach align with WSL Football's values, and that the partnership, like all of the league's commercial deals, represents investment into the whole women's football ecosystem rather than the league alone.
Carl Hess, chief executive of WTW, said the company's purpose of transforming tomorrows is a vision shared by WSL Football, and that the collaboration presents a unique opportunity to bring WTW's risk, insurance and advisory capabilities to women's football, with a focus on enabling players, clubs and leagues to thrive with confidence as the women's game continues its rapid ascent on the world stage.
What makes this partnership more than a straightforward sponsorship deal is the explicit commitment to co-create a genuinely new insurance product rather than simply extend an existing men's football framework to female players. Given the well-documented physiological differences in injury risk, and a sum-insured gap that has taken years to begin closing even as the commercial side of the women's game has grown rapidly, a product built from the ground up around female-specific risk factors, rather than retrofitted from a male template, addresses a gap the market has been visibly aware of since at least 2022. Whether the resulting product actually closes that gap at scale will depend on how quickly WTW and WSL clubs can translate this partnership's stated ambition into policy wordings players and clubs can actually buy.
