S&P Global — 2025’s Highs and Lows

S&P Global Market Intelligence has published a report on 2025. There are highs and lows. Lest you get too excited, the report notes there are mostly lows.

The highs ended up in the commercial liability lines and the lows hit personal lines hard. Report writers, Jason Woleben, Tim Zawacki and Husain Rupawala said the hardest hit was the homeowners line though it did benefit from no hurricanes making landfall in 2025.

That said, they pointed out the real story in the report isn’t commercial lines verses personal lines but it’s property verses casualty.

“We can say with conviction that the industry will not replicate these results in 2026, or, quite possibly, at any point in the foreseeable future,” they said in the report and noted the 2025 underwriting results were the strongest in 19 years.

Underwriting in the P&C lines saw a net gain of $67.9 billion compared to the inflation-adjusted $54.2 billion in 2006. The combined ratio of just a dash under 93.0 topped the 92.4 recorded 19 years ago in 2006.

• Homeowners net loss ratio was 53.7
• That’s 11 points better than 2024 and the lowest since 2015
• The net loss ratio for private passenger auto was 61.1 and 4.7 points better than 2024
• It’s the lowest loss ratio for that line since 2020
• Personal auto physical damage’s net loss ratio was 52.2 — the lowest in 30 years
• The net loss ratio for an aggregation of casualty lines rose to 66.7
• The loss ratio for liability coverage of 68.0 was the highest in 21 years
• The medical professional liability loss ratio of 57.9 is also the highest in 21 years

“In addition to the unique confluence of circumstances that led to 2025’s outsized profitability, written premium growth is significantly lagging earned premium growth at respective rates of 4.9% and 6.3% as heightened competition returns to the private auto market and the scourge of social inflation is not going away,” the authors wrote.

Source link: Carrier Management — https://bit.ly/4uSAsrt