With Beazley likely having already absorbed the majority of its losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, next year could be one of its strongest for more than a decade, the insurer’s CEO said.
“We hope that the COVID-19 claims are generally behind us,” Andrew Horton said at the Reuters Events Future of Insurance Europe conference. “We have written more insurance in 2020 than we originally thought, and we think 2021 is looking better. It is probably going to be one of our best growth years since the early 2000s.”
In September, Beazley doubled its claims estimate related to the pandemic to $340 million, with the vast majority of the increase caused by event cancellations, Reuters reported. Horton said that it was unlikely the company would see many more event cancellation claims coming through.
“There may be some liability claims coming out of COVID-19 which will take a while to mature; that will happen over a number of years rather than instantly,” Horton said.
Horton said that Beazley – which manages six Lloyd’s syndicates – and others in the market were working with Lloyd’s on a common approach to the underwriting of fossil fuels, Reuters reported. Lloyd’s and many others in the insurance industry have faced increasing criticism for insuring coal.
The market is now “thinking through how we can be as definitive as possible” about what it is willing to insure, Horton said. He added that Beazley does not insure new coal mines, Reuters reported.
