William Robert Berkley, president, CEO and director of WR Berkley Corporation, said he is seeing early signs that competitiveness in the property catastrophe reinsurance market is spreading to casualty insurance, as players strive to meet premium targets on the property side and therefore lean toward casualty insurance for revenue generation.
Speaking on WR Berkley Corporation’s Q4’25 earnings call, Berkley noted a decrease in property catastrophe reinsurance rates at renewal on January 1, 2026.
“To give you a data point related to our primary treaty, the Property Cat Treaty, our risk-adjusted rates were down 19%,” he said. “So from my perspective, I think that speaks volumes about the challenges the market is facing and perhaps what are the factors that will have a cascading effect and make the market more competitive.”
His comments are consistent with Gallagher Re’s latest reinsurance renewal report, which shows risk-adjusted global property catastrophe reinsurance rates to fall by an average of 10% to 20% to 1.1 in 2026.
Falling interest rates are causing some market participants to miss their property premium targets, prompting them to turn to the casualty insurance market, Berkeley said. However, he emphasized that this approach does not reflect WR Berkeley’s underwriting strategy.
“My sense is that a lot of people have a lot of money and they feel pressured to put it to work, they’re trying to hit their budgets and so on. So when the premium on real estate isn’t enough, they try to figure out what other levers they can use. And Casualty seems to be one of those…so, we’ll have to see over time,” he said.
Berkley added: “Do I think investment income is a component of that? Yes, probably. Can I quantify for you the difference between one and the other? No, I don’t have any confidence. But I do think investment income is proving to be more competitive. From our perspective, it appears to have a greater impact on casualties than we expected.”
“Having said that, it’s not a bad thing for us to buy a lot of reinsurance right now. We assume we’ll handle it like we have in the past. Our colleagues are interested in making money, not writing business.”
WR Berkley reported strong results for 4Q25, with pre-tax underwriting revenue increasing 14.9% year over year to a record $338 million in the quarter and a record $1.2 billion for the full year 2025.
