According to the Association of British Insurers (ABI), subsidence claims totalled £153 million in the first half of this year, supporting almost 9,000 households at an average payout of £17,263. The ABI’s separate first-quarter 2026 data put the average settled subsidence claim at £17,820, the highest figure on record and up 9% year on year from £16,295, following 2025 payouts that reached a record £307 million.
Lloyd’s isn’t alone. Several major City institutions relaxed desk policies during last month’s heatwave, including JPMorgan, ING and Deutsche Bank, alongside insurer Hiscox, with JPMorgan easing its notoriously strict office attendance rules for the roughly 13,000 staff it employs in London. ING has reportedly held off doing the same this week, on the grounds that the Met Office hasn’t issued the same red-level warning that triggered its June policy.
Winslow’s move continues a pattern of senior executives crossing from the UK’s large composite insurers into the specialty and MGA sector as that segment’s delegated authority model continues to expand within the London market. His background, however, sits closer to personal lines scale and integration than to the founder-led, product-innovation culture CFC has cultivated under O’Shea, and how he adapts that experience to a fast-growing specialist business, rather than the appointment itself, is now the more interesting question for the market to watch.
For vacant heritage properties, prevention has become as important as insurance itself. Aitken said insurers expect vacant heritage buildings to be actively managed through measures such as regular inspections, monitored fire alarms, security systems and, where possible, some level of occupancy. He added that advances in fire detection, CCTV and water monitoring technology have strengthened owners’ ability to protect historic properties over the past decade.
Under the deal, Allianz Asia Holdings is acquiring HSBC Life (Singapore) outright from HSBC Insurance (Asia-Pacific) Holdings, with completion expected in the first half of 2027 pending sign-off from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Alongside the sale, the two firms are locking in a 15-year exclusive bancassurance agreement, backed by an upfront S$200 million payment, under which HSBC’s branches will keep selling Allianz’s protection, health, retirement and wealth products to its Singapore customers.
The immediate picture is grim enough on its own. Around 40,000 people were evacuated from the Cap Ferret peninsula near Bordeaux, a packed holiday destination in peak season, after flames jumped a firebreak crews had built overnight and forced an “immediate” evacuation order at 6:30am local time. The fire there has already burned through roughly 8,700 hectares. In Spain, more than 10,000 people were moved out of towns west of Madrid, where three separate fires were burning in the region and neighbouring Ávila province – two of them threatening to merge into one larger blaze – backed by over 270 emergency personnel, 40 ground units and army Military Emergency Unit contingents. Spain has now recorded more than 350 individual fires this year.
The recognition process involved a 15-week research program combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Researchers conducted one-on-one interviews with insurance brokers and distributed large-scale surveys across Insurance Business’s global network, collecting data on usability, performance, innovation, and real-world value.
When Krista Swanson, Senior Vice President of Corporate IT at supply chain software company Kinaxis in Ottawa, describes how her organization defines AI ROI, she’s quick to move past the familiar fixation on hours saved. “I think organizations can get very hyper-focused on productivity as an uplift, but we’re almost past that point now,” says Swanson. “The question is, as with any IT investment: how is that going to make the business materially better?”
President and CEO John Doyle said the company generated “6% overall revenue growth, 5% underlying revenue growth, and 9% growth in adjusted EPS” for the quarter. Doyle said demand for the firm’s expertise remained strong across risk, people, strategy, and investments in the first half of 2026.
In markets where underwriting is already highly automated, such as motor insurance, the benefits are different. AI enables faster, higher-quality back-end data work, quicker model fitting and improved predictive models, helping insurers improve pricing accuracy rather than fundamentally changing how they assess risk.
© 2026 Next Employment. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Website Terms | Sitemap
