Commercial property brokers can no longer assume that a familiar building means a familiar risk. Net zero technologies, changing occupancies and more volatile weather are altering the exposures inside and around existing properties, sometimes without significantly changing the buildings themselves, and brokers who rely on last year's submission may be working with an outdated picture.
Matthew Briggs (pictured), UK technical director for commercial property at AXA in London, said the property risk landscape has changed considerably over the past decade, with lithium-ion batteries, solar installations and building conversions creating new questions around fire, escape of water and risk management. Speaking to Insurance Business UK's IB Talk podcast in July 2026, Briggs said one of the clearest changes has been in fire risk.
"It's changed considerably, particularly with regards to fire loss," Briggs said. "We've seen things like lithium-ion batteries were quite prevalent 10 years ago, but now there's just been a huge surge in usage in all applications."
He pointed to more powerful devices being charged in homes, including electric scooters and bikes, alongside handheld tools and forklift trucks charged overnight in industrial settings that previously relied on other power sources.
UK fire brigades responded to a lithium-ion battery fire roughly once every five hours in 2025, according to research from insurer QBE tracking the sharp rise in battery-related incidents. For brokers, that scale of exposure means asking not just what happens at a commercial property, but what equipment is now being used and charged there, building lithium-ion questions into every site survey.
Briggs also flagged a rise in fires linked to vaping devices, following high-profile incidents including the blaze that swept through a building next to Glasgow Central station in March 2026, which fire investigators traced to a vape shop.
Solar installations present another example of technology changing the risk profile of existing buildings. "These essentially are a good thing – a key part of net zero – and we welcome them," Briggs said. "But at the same time, they need to be inspected, they need a proper maintenance regime. We have seen fires in inverters, and obviously the more of these applications we have as they age, they tend to be the older applications that have had the fires."
For brokers, that points to a maintenance and inspection history becoming as relevant to a submission as the installation itself.
The same principle applies when buildings are repurposed. The office-to-home conversion boom is already reshaping UK property risk, as existing commercial buildings are adapted for very different occupancies. Briggs described the conversion of retail and office space into residential accommodation as broadly welcome from a net zero perspective, but warned that the change in use can fundamentally alter the exposure even where the underlying building remains the same.
"You've gone from having one or two sets of bathrooms on a floor to having 30 sets of bathrooms and kitchens," he said. "The escape of water potential is huge."
AXA does insure these conversions, Briggs added, but only where the redesign properly accounts for the new use, underscoring why brokers presenting conversion risks need to show underwriters that the redesign, not just the original building specification, has been properly assessed.
The challenge is likely to become increasingly relevant as pressure to improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings drives further retrofit work, with government plans requiring privately rented homes to meet higher energy efficiency standards by October 2030 adding to the pressure on landlords.
Heat pumps are another example: Briggs expects installations to increase over the next five years and warned that replacing older copper plumbing systems could increase escape of water exposure.
Changes inside buildings are happening alongside a changing external environment. Increasingly volatile UK weather is bringing extreme heat and dry summers that can drive subsidence claims, while wildfire is emerging as a more significant consideration. Subsidence has already emerged as insurers' primary heat-related property risk, despite growing concern around wildfire exposure.
"This is not Cyprus or Malta," he said. "We've had forest fires in Scotland for the first time, and I think we'll see more of that going forward."
That combination makes historical assumptions about a property increasingly difficult to rely on in isolation. A building may occupy the same location, serve the same business and appear physically unchanged, while the technology inside it, the way it's used and the hazards around it have shifted substantially.
For brokers, the task is no longer simply refreshing a submission; it's building a case that accounts for what has changed inside and around a client's property since the risk was last assessed, rather than assuming last year's file still tells the full story.
