Deja Vu as Berkley Bashes Delegated Underwriters

W.R. Berkley’s CEO wasted nary clip addressing the contented that has been stuck successful his craw for astatine slightest a year.

“We proceed to person large interest astir overmuch of the [delegated underwriting authority] exemplary and however it’s participating successful the marketplace,” said W. Robert Berkley Jr, president, CEO and astir precocious chairman—a rubric helium took implicit erstwhile his father, manufacture fable and institution founder, William R. Berkley passed away successful June.

Berkley’s comments connected managing wide agencies and underwriters came arsenic soon arsenic CFO Richard Baio’s second-quarter fiscal study was complete. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based commercialized insurer saw net income increase astir 12.7% compared to a twelvemonth ago.

“We person ever had questions astir delegated authorization and the deficiency of alignment of interests,” Berkley said during the telephone with analysts. “It seems similar this is mushrooming and yet is going to extremity successful tears for marketplace participants that are not having the due power implicit the superior and however it is being managed.”

The “greatest stupidity,” according to Berkley, is successful spot insurance—shared and layered sum structures. “We’re seeing that h2o falling done to different parts of the spot market,” helium said.

Berkley’s contempt present is not new. In fact, helium made akin comments a twelvemonth agone erstwhile helium archetypal called retired a mismatch of alignment betwixt the pen and superior holders. He continued the taxable during a first-quarter 2026 call.

Related: ‘We’ll Have to See How This Plays Out,’ Says CEO Berkley connected MGA Competitors | Rational Market? How About ‘Dumb’ and ‘Bizarre’?

Berkley’s astir precocious said during the Q2 telephone that the “big thorn successful the broadside of the marketplace” are “these radical moving astir with the pen for idiosyncratic else, and they get paid based connected the argumentation they constitute arsenic opposed to the underwriting results they achieve.”

Topics Underwriting