How Exact Data Is Raising the Standard for Insurance Coverage Advice

For large organizations, the stakes are too high to approximate commercial insurance limits, true exposure coverage, or a comparison against competitors’ programs. In this session at RISKWORLD^® 2026, brokerage and risk management experts highlighted what to look and ask for based on a framework for evaluating your advisors.

Speakers Included:

• Jim Blinn, Vice President, Client Solutions at Zywave
• Stephen Westcott, Senior Director, Casualty Broker & Analytics Leader – Northeast Region at WTW
• Jeff Cohen. Senior Vice President, Industry Relations at Zywave
• Christie Weinstein, Senior Director, Risk Management, Solstice Advanced Materials, Inc.

Organizations are constantly coming up with new data. If you are an insurance buyer, how are you staying current?

Insurance buyers have certain expectations when they approach their broker to help develop their insurance programs. Communication is essential. When it comes to data, buyers need assistance from their broker partners to help interpret the data they need to understand. In turn, brokers need to understand their insurance buyers’ business. Staying current with their clients’ business developments is an essential element of the relationship. They require their broker to do their homework and stay proactive in the risks, trends, and needs related to their clients. The brokers that accomplish that stand out as differentiators in the industry.

From a broker perspective, they strive to understand every aspect of their client. It is not just the numbers, but rather every piece of related news about their clients and their clients’ industries. In addition, they reach out to other brokers in their organization for knowledge sharing. Time spent with their clients also helps broaden that understanding. Collectively, this is how to build the best and most advantageous connections.

Data is at the very center of this relationship. So what trends is the data showing us lately?

Zywave’s loss insight data shows the following casualty trends:

• $86M was the average nuclear verdict in 2025, which is up from $44M in 2010.
• 200+ cases exceeded $10M in 2025 alone.
• This produced a $4.2M median loss rate.
• This resulted in a 7% annual social inflation rate.

Severity trends continue to increase as a result, which is causing the cost of insurance to increase as a result, and the coverage gap is widening. This influences limits selection. Companies are essentially buying a limit today for losses that will not be settled for years from now. It is important to ensure that your limits will be appropriate when you incur those claims. Data helps determine that. This should include benchmarking in an organization’s peer group, which can yield very beneficial data points to consider.

AI is rapidly entering this dynamic, but it is what you do with that AI data that really matters. It cannot be something you use without oversight at this point. A human element is still necessary. The quick AI answer might not be the information that the broker and their client is looking for, so quick is not always a solution for finding the right type of analysis to make informed decisions.

AI’s capabilities, however, are shifting rapidly. Applications within the industry will continue to improve and if industry stakeholders do not find out how to use AI to its benefit, they will be at a disadvantage. It will allow buyers, brokers, and carriers to become more informed and make insurance program structure decisions accordingly. Everyone’s goal should be the same, which is creating the best structured program for the client.