Food and drink risks are becoming harder to place not because capacity is scarce, but because insurers are less willing to rely on partial visibility.
For Jamie Barham (pictured right), sales director at Verlingue, that shift is redefining underwriting in the sector. Capacity has returned after a prolonged hard market, but confidence has not followed at the same pace, leaving brokers to do more work upfront to secure terms.
The past 12 to 18 months have seen a clear reopening of the food and drink market. Barham describes it as the softest conditions he has seen in more than 20 years. That has improved access, but not reduced scrutiny.
“Insurers are still very selective and they will only really go to bat for well managed and well presented risks,” he said.
The distinction is now central to placement. Capacity may be available, but it is deployed selectively, with a growing focus on governance, risk management and operational detail, particularly around material damage and business interruption.
The sector’s dependence on global supply chains has shifted from background exposure to a core underwriting concern.
“Every single store, every single outlet needs stock,” Barham said. “And to get that, it needs to arrive in the UK.”
What has changed is the predictability of that flow. Disruption driven by conflict, fuel pressure or trade routes can affect businesses even when their suppliers appear diversified.
“It’s not simply about goods coming from there,” he said. “It’s goods that might have to fly over there or boat through there.”
Additionally, digitisation is reshaping production risk. Automated systems improve efficiency but create single points of failure, meaning operational disruption can escalate quickly.
“What was once considered turning it off and back on again is now cause for major operational disruption,” Barham said.
That shift is pulling cyber risk into the centre of underwriting, linking IT failure directly to business interruption. Despite these emerging exposures, traditional losses still dominate insurer concern.
“They’ll look at it and say, what could cause me to have a multi-million pound claim here? I still think a fire is the one,” Barham said.
A major incident can combine physical damage with prolonged interruption, reinforcing caution even in a softer market.
As capacity returns, the quality of risk presentation has become the decisive factor in securing cover.
“It’s quite easy to go and insure a food and bev business,” Barham said. “But actually getting into the detail of the risk and presenting it in the right way is where a lot of people fall down.”
Insurers are increasingly working alongside brokers and clients, placing more emphasis on risk improvement as well as risk transfer. That includes closer scrutiny of business continuity planning, particularly around supplier resilience and geopolitical disruption.
Many plans remain focused on site-level incidents rather than wider external shocks. As exposures extend beyond physical assets, that gap is becoming more visible in underwriting discussions.
In a market that can turn quickly on the back of a single large loss, food and drink risks are no longer judged on exposure alone, but on how clearly that exposure is understood and controlled before it is priced.
