The firm, led by insurance veteran Peter Cullum and chief executive James McCaffrey (pictured right), signed four deals in quick succession at the end of 2025, taking stakes in drone specialist MGA Moonrock, Tree Surgeon & Forestry Insurance Services, Sturdy Edwards and Cyber Cover, before opening 2026 with an investment in RAW.
This is not Jensten’s first conversion of a Coversure franchise into a directly owned business. The group has previously acquired Coversure offices in Nottingham, Stamford, Kidderminster, Poole and Dudley, absorbing some of the network’s highest-performing franchisees as their owners look to retire or realise the value they have built.
Munich Re estimated total global natural catastrophe economic losses at around $320 billion in 2024, of which only about $140 billion was insured. That protection gap – roughly 56% of economic losses uninsured – exists now, at a level already consequential for governments, businesses and their lenders, without any reference to 2050 projections. It is the kind of near-term, specific figure that actually drives underwriting decisions, reinsurance treaty structures, and credit assessments.
What caused Wickford and Lewes is for RAIB to determine, and a preliminary finding isn’t likely for weeks. But for anyone weighing rail liability, BI or contingent BI exposure this renewal season, two derailments in 24 hours carries more weight than one. Expect cedants and reinsurers to start asking how inspection regimes and heat thresholds are being reassessed, and whether historical loss data on rail infrastructure still holds up in a summer like this one.
Not everyone on the panel is convinced the joke has much longer to run. Colin Fox, cyber insurance consultant at Integrity, part of Hayes Parsons, was the most sceptical: “I don’t think it’s sustainable,” he said, pointing out that nobody expected the current soft cycle to outlast the last hard market by this much – rates jumped by as much as 100-150% almost overnight back in 2020-21, in his recollection, and the pendulum was assumed to swing back on a similar timescale. It hasn’t. Fox also flagged early signs of hardening in the US market, historically the bellwether for London, which he thinks could feed through to UK pricing within six to twelve months – though he’s cautious about pinning down exactly when.
For UK and Lloyd’s market brokers, the standout line in this result is QBE’s own admission that “premium rates moderated further in property and select Lloyd’s portfolios, where profitability remains attractive” – a rare piece of insurer-side confirmation that brokers can use directly in renewal negotiations on behalf of clients in those lines. The group’s International division, which houses UK and European business, reported an improved combined operating ratio of 91.6%, down from 92.5%, aided by growth in QBE Re, select Lloyd’s portfolios and its Portfolio Solutions facilities business.
Nearly three-quarters of England and all of Wales are officially in drought, and the Met Office has issued a rare amber extreme heat warning, with temperatures expected to reach the mid-to-high 30s across the Midlands and south-east, and a possible high of 38°C. Fire and rescue services in England and Wales had attended 1,017 wildfires in 2026 by the time of the Cobra meeting, equalling last year’s full-year record-breaking total, according to National Fire Chiefs Council data shared with the Press Association. July alone was the busiest wildfire month on record, with 393 incidents attended across England and Wales, per NFCC National Resilience data.
The rise was not evenly distributed across cost elements. Cos Kamasho, principal consultant at BCIS, said an average increase of 4.9% represented a sustained rise on the previous year, with kitchens and sanitaryware climbing 7.8% and 9.4% respectively, and aluminium and uPVC windows rising between 5.5% and 7.5%, both well above the headline figure.
According to the liquidators, from Kroll, Arena’s owner Richard Yeowart ran a scheme built on switched serial numbers: genuine identifying marks on the company’s broadcast equipment were swapped for fake ones, which let the same physical assets be offered up as security to lender after lender. A related company, Sentinel Broadcast, allegedly acted as the go-between – buying equipment from Arena that, in most instances, simply wasn’t there, borrowing against it from asset-based lenders, and funnelling the money back to Arena while keeping a small slice for itself.
Here, an insurer reversed its own prior assurance with no documented risk rationale offered to the customer, then stopped responding. That kind of gap can turn a routine modification query into a complaint, a media story, or an ombudsman referral, and the reputational and regulatory exposure lands on whoever placed the business, broker included.
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