Insurance scheme renewals and total commission earnings have dropped across the board in the six-month period from April to October, a report by SchemeServe said.
The company’s biannual index said that cyber is again a standout scheme – but this time negatively – with a marked drop at renewal and a significant drop in commission earnings. In previous indices, cyber was one of the best-performing schemes since the start of the pandemic, outpacing many other schemes and growing in volume by nearly 500%. However, in the last six months, cyber volumes fell 24% and total commission income fell 28%, SchemeServe said. Since September 2021, cyber has seen the largest fall among all schemes, declining 49% in volume and 65% in total commissions.
Combined liability was the second-highest earning scheme for brokers back in March, having shown a 37% increase in commission earnings. Six months later, volumes have fallen by 24% and commission earnings dipped by 26%.
Caravan/trailer volumes and commission income continued to slide from their height during the pandemic staycation frenzy, SchemeServe said. In the last six months, volumes have dropped 49% and commission income dropped 37%.
“In our last index in April, we were starting to see a number of high growth schemes stalling and figures starting to fall, and this decline has gathered pace in the last six months across many lines, including caravan, cyber and pubs and clubs,” said Adam Bishop, CEO of SchemeServe. “There could be many reasons for this – different for each product, but certain headwinds, including the macroeconomic environment and hard restrictive market with MGAs losing capacity in certain lines, are likely to be a strong contributing factor.
“Could we be seeing early indicators of a recession starting to bite? It is interesting to see some areas of positivity however, perhaps indicating opportunity for growth, such as commercial combined and contractors all risks which have shown some improvement in the last six months. Our next set of data due out at the end of March 2023 will be interesting – we’ll be tracking movements closely for our MGA and broker clients.”
