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That is a large volume of missed advice and preventable harm happening right now, before any of Streeting’s proposals become policy. The clients who will be dragged into IHT liability by frozen thresholds, rising asset values and the incoming pension change are identifiable, the need is unmet, and the tools exist. Streeting’s agenda, whatever form it ultimately takes, would expand that addressable market further. Getting ahead of the legislative detail, rather than reacting to it, is where the industry’s commercial opportunity sits.

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What was taken

ShinyHunters revised its account of the dataset on Thursday, acknowledging an earlier description was an “overstatement” caused by “an analytical error and an AI-generated misinterpretation of the underlying data.” Its amended claim describes the trove as containing more than 264,000 insurer regulatory filing documents spanning property, casualty, health and life companies between 2017 and 2024; approximately 45,000 files from credit rating agencies including Moody’s, Fitch, S&P and AM Best containing financial identifiers used in global debt markets; statutory annual and quarterly financial statements submitted by insurers; around 2,000 customer records with names, email addresses and payment identifiers; production cloud infrastructure logs and configuration files; and database scripts containing stored credentials tied to live production systems.

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Two earthquakes hit northern Venezuela on Wednesday evening within 39 seconds of each other – a 7.2 magnitude foreshock at 6:04pm local time, then a 7.5 magnitude mainshock. At least 920 people are now confirmed dead and 3,360 injured, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez said in a Friday briefing. Both figures are expected to climb. Buildings collapsed across Caracas, La Guaira and Carabobo. Simón Bolívar International Airport was damaged and shut. The USGS puts a 44% probability on the final death toll exceeding 10,000.

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The Strait of Hormuz has been closed, mined, contested and partially reopened since February. War risk premiums surged from 0.125% of hull value to as high as 10% for the most exposed vessels – an 80-fold increase that generated headlines about a London marine war market finally getting what it deserved after years of soft conditions. The reality, four months on, is more complicated. The market has absorbed losses, written less business than the rate headlines imply, navigated a government intervention that solved the wrong problem, and is now pricing for a recovery that may or may not hold through a 60-day ceasefire window that expires in mid-August. Whether any of this adds up to profit depends on which part of the market you are in, and whether the next six weeks produce incidents or incidents produce further mines. 

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Chris Bose, director of general insurance and international at the ABI, told the committee insurers paid close to £12 billion in motor claims in 2024, alongside £6.1 billion in property claims and £500 million in travel claims. Graeme Trudgill, chief executive of BIBA, said the association’s approximately 1,800 member firms place around £150 billion of premium annually, with brokers handling roughly a third of the personal lines market.

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Peggy Brinkman, a principal actuary at Milliman, maps the trajectory: from univariate actuarial techniques, through generalized linear models, to gradient boosted machine models, and now to explainable boosting machines – a class of model that delivers gradient boosting accuracy with the interpretability that state regulators require for rate filing approval. The shift is happening across the industry, but at very different speeds. “New modeling techniques can extract more value from the same data in terms of risk understanding,” Brinkman said. “Advances in methodologies are as important as bringing in new data sources.”

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The claims tail may prove to be long. Even before the conflict, the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) projected average hull claim costs rising 7 to 22% over five years, while Nordic insurer association Cefor reported in April 2026 that claims cost per vessel sat 33% above pre-pandemic levels. Régis Broudin, global head of marine claims at Allianz Commercial, said the insurer had already received claims notifications from the conflict, “some of which are significant” and potential total losses, with further claims anticipated as cargo deteriorates aboard trapped ships. Those vessels have also faced disrupted maintenance and biofouling, while the growing size of ships is pushing up general average claims – contributions can reach 50% of cargo value, which Allianz notes could exceed US$100 million for a carrier loaded with a few thousand electric vehicles.

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Moody’s projects the global economic impact of physical risk could reach US$41.4 trillion by the mid-2040s. Sea levels are rising, temperatures are climbing, and natural disasters are growing more frequent. A large share of the losses from these events would fall outside existing insurance policies.

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During the 60-day window, the insurance is free — no payment changes hands, and the sanctions exposure is arguably manageable. But after day 60, if the PGSA introduces fees as it has explicitly reserved the right to do, a shipowner acquiring PGSA-approved insurance would be paying a sanctioned entity. That creates a direct conflict between the operational need to comply with PGSA requirements and the legal prohibition on transacting with OFAC-designated organisations. The MOU’s “toll-free” guarantee does not extend to insurance fees. The US position, per JD Vance on Thursday, is that “international waterways should be free of tolls” — not free of insurance premiums.

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Matthew Eby, founder and chief executive officer of First Street, said the more fundamental challenge is the data underwriting models are using. “Most underwriting for real assets still uses historical data, but the climate is no longer behaving the way the historical record would predict. As heat, drought, and water stress increase, outdated models simply don’t offer a complete view of risk anymore,” he said.

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