From insuring risk to mastering it: How large commercial insurers can thrive in the next era
Interviews with senior executives from insurers, brokers, and corporate risk managers shed light on potential success factors for an industry in transition
Extreme weather events, litigation trends, cyber threats, geopolitical conflicts, and evolving regulations are helping rewrite the risk map for large commercial and specialty insurers. At the same time, new technologies, alternative capital, a generational talent cliff, and shifting client expectations are challenging traditional business models, leading insurance carriers to redefine their value in the market. These dynamics are expected to drive most large commercial and specialty insurers to embrace fresh, forward-looking approaches to risks, talent, and operations.
The conundrum: New risks and business realities are causing broad shifts in strategy and structure
Rising risk volatility is driving insurers to become more sophisticated with their risk appetites. As risk aggregations and profit margins become more challenging to sustain in the traditional large commercial segment, many insurers are rebalancing and diversifying their business portfolios,1 bolstering their positions in middle-market,2 specialty,3 and nonstandard lines.4
At the same time, competition is intensifying as outside capital continues to flow into the market, funding new managing general agents and reinsurers. In fact, in 2024, the managing general agent market premium volume grew by 26%, reaching nearly US$100 billion,5 outpacing overall property and casualty premium growth by a wide margin.6
As insurers recalibrate their portfolios, many large commercial enterprises are also rethinking their own risk strategies, retaining greater property and casualty risks in captives7 and eroding insurers’ traditional revenue pools. This leaves insurers to target a shrinking pool of risks that are more complex and volatile. A corporate risk manager observes, “Once we get comfortable holding more risk, we are not going to come back. That’s business that’s gone forever.”8
As a result, traditional insurers, alternative capital providers, and corporate captives are all playing evolving roles in how commercial risk is financed and distributed.
In the coming years, what will separate market-winning insurers from the rest? Deloitte’s research and executive interviews with senior executives representing direct insurers, reinsurers, brokers, and corporate risk managers reveal several strategic pivots that leading commercial and specialty insurers could pursue to propel profitable growth in the next five years.
Shifting focus from risk aversion to risk solutioning
In an environment of increasing risk complexity and uncertainty, large and complex corporate clients want creative, holistic solutions from their insurance and risk management partners. Highlighting this evolving client need, one executive mentions that clients are looking for “less commoditized solutions” and “more of a consultancy expectation.”9 Yet, risk aversion remains pervasive, especially for risks emerging from AI deployment.10
By developing next-generation risk modeling capabilities and capitalizing on proprietary data assets, insurers can share differentiated risk insights with their clients and ultimately provide more tailored risk solutions. This can be accomplished either exclusively or through strategic partnerships and alignment with brokers, technology vendors, and reinsurers. For example, a commercial carrier may develop a next-generation catastrophe model that combines proprietary claims and sensor data with third-party climate projections to simulate interconnected loss scenarios across geographies, helping clients test and tailor coverage structures in real time.
Some leading insurers are already implementing solutions like bundling technology-powered risk services and insurance coverage to create “always on,” responsive protection. For instance, according to Hartford Steam Boiler, its industrial Internet of Things solutions were designed to help clients prevent property and equipment losses.11 AXA XL offers its clients access to the AXA XL Ecosystem, a suite of holistic risk management solutions that leverage partnerships and services for “continuous, real-time protection.”12
The future likely belongs to insurers that intensify focus on risk solutioning, collaborating to develop products, alternative risk structures, and services that help clients navigate volatility rather than opting out of underwriting the more challenging exposures.13 One insurance executive we interviewed says, “Part of [their company’s] broader strategy is to move from payer to partner … not just writing the claims check, but engaging with clients.”14 Another notes that clients are looking for carriers to lean in as “solution providers” and “be aware of the risks rather than simply shy away.”15 Reflecting this approach, Zurich North America, Chubb, and National Indemnity partnered to launch an excess umbrella liability facility in a bid to help clients navigate the tough litigation environment.16
Moreover, through collaborations with brokers, insurers can continue to develop new ways to share and distribute risks, especially for emerging sectors and risks. For instance, Aon launched a new insurance facility for emerging industries like blue and green hydrogen in partnership with Zurich.17 These facilities pool underwriting capacity from multiple carriers to spread large or uncertain risks across several balance sheets, making coverage possible for industries that might otherwise be considered uninsurable.
However, this evolution involves a cultural shift as much as a strategic one. Many carriers still operate in siloed structures with incentive models that affect the pace of change. Underwriting, claims, and operations teams are often measured on different performance targets, creating challenges for the cross-functional collaboration needed to deliver integrated risk solutions.
Carriers with a risk solutioning mindset, like those bundling technology-enabled risk services or cocreating capacity solutions for emerging industries, seem to share a common trait: They tend to embed collaboration and learning agility into how they operate. Their teams are often empowered to experiment with new partnerships, data sources, and business models, while staying anchored in the underwriting and risk management discipline.
Market winners will likely be those that institutionalize this culture—rewarding collaboration, innovation, and experimentation while staying laser-focused on profitable growth.
Crafting adaptive portfolios for dynamic markets
While insurers, brokers, and capital providers collaborate to develop solutions for large commercial clients, there will continue to be healthy competitive tension among market participants to capture a share of profitable growth opportunities. Companies that anticipate and adapt to shifting market cycles could hold an edge in increasingly dynamic conditions. Yet, many insurers struggle to sustain these shifts amid short-term financial pressures and competing priorities. Market leaders are finding ways to deliver incremental value while staying the course on long-term portfolio transformation.
Cultivating adaptive portfolios can largely hinge on two capabilities: market sensing and market access. Carriers that are adept at market sensing are leveraging data, analytics, and AI to track shifts in loss frequency, severity, and pricing dynamics, allowing them to adjust portfolios more quickly and precisely.18 As one executive explains, “We’ve been trying to use our data and AI (traditional AI) … to identify those opportunities with existing partners where we would be a good fit.”19 This focus on analytical precision is echoed in Swiss Re’s development of a climate risk score tool using Palantir’s Foundry platform, which combines historical climate data, economic indicators, and geographical information to predict the impact of climate events on insurance portfolios.20
Insurers with diversified access to capacity, through open brokerage, the London Market and other reinsurance markets, and capital domiciles such as Bermuda, can more flexibly manage exposure and maintain market consistency through economic cycles. As one executive put it, “We’ve spent a lot of time building our global network … so we’re making sure we’re tapped into every major market and are extracting what we can from each.”21
Focusing operations on risk outcomes
As more insurers shift from “payers” to “partners” that deliver holistic risk solutions, operations will likely be stretched in many ways to shift from transaction processing to empowerment of risk outcomes. For these insurers, prevention and recovery could be as core to the business as underwriting and claims.
Operations will evolve to serve a growing portfolio of new products with unique risk solutions and economic structures. A proactive operations function could synthesize real-time risk intelligence for prevention and mitigation opportunities. Apart from focusing on annual renewal events and claims, operations could actively support a wide range of year-round risk prevention efforts. As insurers grow their networks of risk solution partners, operations can drive ecosystem orchestration. Running operations cost-effectively and delivering risk solutions and services at scale will largely be dependent on modernizing digital, data, and core systems.22
Nurturing future-ready talent
Leading insurers are promoting opportunities for innovation and impact in the complex commercial insurance space. However, as experienced underwriters, actuaries, risk engineers, and claims professionals retire in record numbers, insurers are losing critical institutional knowledge needed to navigate the changing risk landscape.23
At the same time, insurers are also looking for talent with new skills to support strategies for the large commercial and specialty client segments, especially related to high-demand talent such as data and AI specialists.24 This combination of a shrinking talent pool amid the soaring need for specialized knowledge is consistently top of mind for insurance leaders. One executive notes, “You can copy competitors’ products easily, but you really can’t replicate your biggest asset, which is people.”25
According to Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends report, the future of work will be defined by “the human value proposition,” where technology augments rather than replaces human capability.26 Technology can also help ease the insurance learning curve without overextending seasoned professionals. Insurers can leverage AI-powered platforms to create interactive, self-improving knowledge libraries to accelerate the development of newer employees. Insurers that meaningfully redesign specialized career paths and technology-augmented job roles have the opportunity to create lasting competitive differentiation through talent.
The strategy shifts in the large commercial segment create potential for new roles to emerge, as work shifts to areas such as deal structuring and negotiation, relationship development and consultation, portfolio optimization, and the fine-tuning of models and financial engineering that fuel innovative business solutions. Market leaders can use these workforce pivots to strategically draw in new talent and cultivate existing professionals, building multidisciplinary teams that combine specialized knowledge of insurance clients’ industries, data fluency and analytical skills, along with enduring human relationship and advisory skills.
Building the future of commercial insurance
The next chapter is being written in large commercial and specialty insurance. Risk solutioning will become more creative. Portfolio management will become more dynamic. Operations will become a catalyst and conduit for risk solutioning. And at the center of it all will be talent: Insurers that embed entrepreneurial cultures, elevate their brand, and attract a new generation of thinkers could gain an edge.
The next five years should redefine who leads and who lags in large commercial and specialty insurance.
The future of large commercial insurance is not expected to be decided by scale or capital, but by the ability to adapt. The leaders of 2030 are likely to be the ones who institutionalize innovation, embedding learning, automation, and partnership into every aspect of how they operate. The industry’s next chapter could be written by those who move from insuring risk to mastering it.
The message is clear: Evolve, differentiate, and lead—or be left behind.
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Meet the industry leaders
Kelly Cusick
Amy Allen
Michelle Canaan
Dishank Jain
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Kelly Cusick
Amy Allen
Dishank Jain
The authors would like to thank Reetika Fleming (research manager, Deloitte Center for Financial Services) for her contribution to the storyboarding and writing.
The authors would also like to thank Michael Green (senior advisor, Deloitte Bermuda), Sathish Marimuthu (managing director, Consulting Services), Prithvi Mazumder (technology fellow, Consulting Services), Arun Nayan Singh (senior consultant, Consulting Services), and Simran Nambiar (consultant, Consulting Services) for their inputs to the point of view.
Editorial: Abrar Khan, Aditi Rao, Hannah Bachman, and Anu Augustine
Design: Jaime Austin and Sylvia Chang
Knowledge services: Vanapalli Viswa Teja
Cover artist: Jim Slatton and Jaime Austin; Adobe Stock
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