Reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter will face headwinds as prices soften further at 1.1 2026 renewals as part of the reinsurance market, specifically real estate catastrophes, and expects this trend to continue in subsequent 2026 renewals, but management also sees ample growth opportunities in the coming months.
Guy Carpenter, the reinsurance brokerage arm of Marsh, performed strongly in 2025, with revenue reaching $2.5 billion, up 6% from the previous year, driven by strong fourth-quarter revenue of $215 million at the end of the year.
Despite the strong results, during a recent earnings call, Guy Carpenter and Marsh executives were asked about the outlook for the reinsurance business and how that would impact Guy Carpenter’s potential organic growth amid accelerating weakness in the economy, particularly in real estate.
John Doyle, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Marsh, said: “Guy Carpenter generally delivered good results last year in a soft market and has performed well this year. Therefore, we expect the market to be challenging in 2026, and certainly the first of this year will show that our performance is in line with our expectations.”
He went on to note that this is certainly good for the company’s ceded customers, which are reinsurance buyers, adding that Guy Carpenter has seen increased demand in certain places where this was less evident last year.
“So we’re excited about that, but we’re also focused on a few different areas advising clients in the reinsurance and capital space,” Doyle said.
Guy Carpenter President and CEO Dean Klisura also responded to this question, emphasizing that the real estate cat interest rate environment and the interest rate pattern will definitely become a headwind for the company in 2026.
However, Klisura remains “very optimistic” about Guy Carpenter’s fundamentals, talent and abilities.
Klisura said: “Our data and analytics platform is a key differentiator. We continue to attract top talent in GC. We have grown our headcount for five consecutive years and made some key hires in the market that will truly impact the business. Nonetheless… we achieved record new business in 2025, new business was also very strong in the fourth quarter, and we are pleased with the momentum.”
The CEO went on to highlight a number of potential drivers, including various areas of new business.
“I’ve spoken in the past about Capital and Advisory, our investment banking group, having an unprecedented impact on our clients given the current flow of third-party capital into the market. I emphasized this at Data Center. We have had influential engagement with our clients in M&A advisory, raising third-party capital, fairness opinions and more. With. You’ve read a lot about sidecars, there’s billions of dollars of new capital coming into the market to create casualty sidecars. As you know, there’s a lot of customer interest in Lloyd’s platform, and there’s a lot being written about structured solutions, so there’s a lot to think about.”
Additionally, Klisura described the casualty market as a “clear growth opportunity for brokers and reinsurers.”
“While the renewal results were in line with expectations, we think this is a real area of growth. Martin talked about casualty growth of 19% in the fourth quarter. That has a direct impact on the quota share contracts in our portfolio, which is the majority of our portfolio. If you think about casualty sidecars, third-party capital, and everything that’s happened in the casualty space, we’re seeing strong growth in our casualty portfolio at a growth rate of 1.1. So we think we have ample sources of new business growth and growth opportunities that may not have existed a year ago,” he said.
Doyle added: “Obviously there will be headwinds in the property pricing market, but there are many areas for growth that we need to focus on.”
One area of opportunity for Guy Carpenter and Marsh Group involves the emergence and rapid development of broader artificial intelligence, data centers and digital infrastructure, which Klisura discussed in detail during the call to understand how Guy Carpenter can support Marsh’s broader efforts in this area.
“This is a significant new business opportunity for both cedants and reinsurers in 2026,” Klisura said. “As a result of these opportunities, up to $10 billion in new premiums are expected to enter the market by 2026, and the market requires more capacity. No ceding company can provide billions of dollars of capacity for risks in a single location. So, this is a real issue. All of our clients want global 10 Data centers are being built in multiple products, but they need additional reinsurance protection. Everyone is concerned about portfolio accumulation and we are solving that for our clients now. I think we need to bring new capital to the market, not just traditional reinsurance capital, and bringing in third-party capital and securitizing some of these risks through sidecars and other vehicles will be critical, and those investors will have to be deep-pocketed investors given the scale of these risks, but we think this is the biggest new opportunity in 2026.”
