Surviving a softening market with smarter renewals

Renewal season is arguably the most demanding period in the reinsurance calendar. Recent market conditions have made the process increasingly complex – driving expectations for faster turnaround, greater transparency and stronger governance. 

Despite its importance, renewal management has not been modernised as much as it deserves. For many (re)insurers, renewals continue to be a reactive, largely manual back-office function, reliant on legacy systems, spreadsheets and lengthy email chains.  

Lack of visibility 

A lack of a single source of truth creates limited visibility and control across the renewal portfolio. Information is often scattered across personal and shared drives, making even basic planning difficult – such as identifying which treaties are approaching renewal, or distinguishing straight-through renewals from those requiring negotiation.  

While this may once have been an inconvenience, slower visibility today allows more digitally enabled competitors to engage earlier and win business.  

Fragmented data further undermines renewal effectiveness. Performance information – including premiums, claims and loss ratios – is often spread across multiple systems, requiring manual effort to gather, reconcile and validate.  

As a result, renewal decisions are delayed or made without full insight. By the time data is available, negotiations may already be underway or concluded. This increases the risk of agreeing pricing and terms without fully understanding historical performance. 

Manual renewals: a hidden risk? 

These challenges are compounded by operational strain during renewal season. Heavy reliance on knowledgeable individuals to manually locate, rekey and reconcile information creates bottlenecks and key-person risk, pulling resources away from higher-value activities.  

Manual processing increases the likelihood of errors, inconsistencies and version control issues, particularly in a softening market where more renewals require negotiation. The fallout? Missed opportunities to restructure terms or exit underperforming treaties, delayed premium recognition, cash-flow strain, and reputational damage. 

Automation: the key to renewal resilience 

Automation plays a critical role in addressing these pressures. Centralised, integrated renewal management provides early visibility of upcoming renewals across configurable timelines, enabling proactive planning and portfolio-level prioritisation. High-risk and high-value renewals can be identified early, allowing teams to focus on what matters most. 

A single source of truth also enables immediate access to core performance data at the point of renewal. By eliminating manual data gathering, resources can focus on evidence-based decision-making, supporting underwriting discipline and justifying pricing and terms in a more competitive environment. 

Automation further enables faster response times through straight-through processing of pre-agreed renewals, with contracts and professional documentation generated automatically. For negotiated renewals, guided workflows and standardised processes support consistent, controlled adjustments to terms, limits and deductions – significantly reducing rework and error. 

Equally important is governance. End-to-end lifecycle management provides full auditability from initial offer through to acceptance, supporting compliance, reporting and post-renewal review. This transparency enables (re)insurers to understand not only individual outcomes, but broader portfolio trends and negotiation patterns. 

Strategic asset 

As renewal volumes, complexity and market expectations continue to rise, reliance on manual, people-dependent processes are no longer sustainable. In a softening market, weaknesses in renewal processes are quickly exposed. 

Now is the time for (re)insurers to rethink their renewal strategy. By investing in automated renewal management, renewals become repeatable, consistent, auditable and insight driven. They become a strategic asset.  

Market cycles will always change. But renewal discipline, enabled by the right foundations, is what allows (re)insurers not just to survive changing conditions, but to outperform across them.