Expectations have risen in the marine (re)insurance market and there is now a demand for better data and a desire for greater transparency when it comes to exposure management, according to participants at a joint Emerging Risks/Concirrus Roundtable held at this year’s International Union of Marine Insurance Conference in Edinburgh.

Discussing the subject “Writing war risks without a safety net – how can marine insurers better manage exposures to mitigate reinsurance shortfalls?” the roundtable discussed the recent turbulence with regard to the thorny issue of war exclusions, with general agreement that insurers and reinsurers alike have been working hard to try and solve these issues and amend cover this year in a bid to avoid the challenging nature of recent renewals.

Participants accepted that a continuing issue for the market remains its ability to adequately monitor and understand its own aggregations, with some suggesting that recent difficulties over possible Russia-Ukraine-related exposures have served as a wake-up call for sections of the market, which should have a better handle on the utilisation of technology that already exists.

Despite continuing concerns over data adequacy, however, the roundtable consensus was that insurers in the London market have really upped their game of late and now have much more information about their exposures, though there remains a demand for better data still.

Participants also stressed that, after a period of some dislocation, the marine war market has been re-calibrating and that it is returning to a much more normalised state in the run-up to the 1.1 renewals, with one reinsurer that had withdrawn capacity indicating that it is returning to the table, in what was viewed as a very welcome move indeed.