A Quick Look Ahead
Happy New Year! Thankfully 2024, an election year full of mudslinging and political polarization, is behind us. But from a business perspective, it was another great year for Petersen International with growth along many insurance lines of the specialty markets. Individual disability and group GSI numbers continued to grow, and the life and accident insurance sales remained consistent. Now let’s look ahead to what we can hope for from the disability and specialty lines markets over the next 12 months.
The previous hardening of the Lloyd’s DI market has completely stalled and even slightly reversed. Rate corrections have brought premiums down among most classifications. Underwriting syndicates have once again begun to cautiously loosen more-conservative underwriting methodologies that came about during the COVID era. There are still no signs of a full swing to a soft market, but we continue to see more specific boundaries being set by the carriers, allowing us to better anticipate underwriter expectations and marketplace reactions.
This year we anticipate further evolution of the GSI disability space with a continued focus on long-term product viability. It seems rates, policy wordings and benefit limits have found a more harmonious middle ground, which is keeping the product line profitable.
We also anticipate a higher growth percentage in 2025 individual DI sales than we had in 2024. The mostly coveted physician, attorney, executive, high finance, private equity and accounting demographics will keep shining as market prospects. Also, this year we will see more out of fringe industries like gaming, cannabis and digital entertainment, including disability insurance for internet and social media celebrities.
Professional and collegiate athletics will maintain its loyal niche in the market as there will obviously be more interest in insurance for NIL (name, image, likeness) deals as that space further evolves.
We also foresee more risk diversification this year with further expansion into the middle markets, targeting excess limits and impaired-risk disability benefits for gray collar employees not covered by governmental benefits.
In 2025, we plan to continue marketing the highly successful Failure to Survive product line which provides key person death benefits for businesses as well as buy/sell and business loan situations. Impaired-risk retention and quick simplified policy issuance are the key selling points, making FTS one of the best financial tools in the specialty insurance markets today.
Increased technology and underwriting process streamlining will also take a front seat this year at Petersen International. Last year we launched digital online e-application platforms for the various Failure to Survive products, and this year we will continue that momentum with development and pending launches of e-applications for all personal and business disability products.