The international market for offshore energy insurance remained under strain in 2025, with growth in reported premiums driven more by currency movements and changes in business mix than by underlying expansion, sources indicated on 25 September 2026.
The account draws on commentary made at the International Union of Marine Insurance annual conference in Rotterdam, where Michele Cibrario, Chair of IUMI’s Offshore Energy Committee, described the market as challenging. The description, as recorded by the publication, framed the 2025 year as one in which headline premium figures did not necessarily signal healthier underwriting conditions.
Currency effects and business mix
Sources noted that much of the premium uplift seen in the sector reflected exchange rate shifts and the composition of policies underwritten rather than sustained market growth. That distinction matters because it separates accounting movements from changes in the underlying exposure to risk.
When premium totals are translated between currencies or when the mix of business shifts towards lines that carry higher monetary values, the aggregate figures can rise even if demand or capacity have not changed in real terms. The IUMI commentary highlighted this phenomenon without publishing granular numbers in the account supplied to The Maritime Gazette.
Reported market pressures in Rotterdam
Speaking at IUMI’s conference in Rotterdam, Michele Cibrario set out the organisation’s assessment that conditions remained testing for offshore energy underwriters in 2025. The report relays the committee chair’s view that profitability pressures were increasing in the segment.
The conference remarks, as summarised by the publication, concentrated on the character of premium growth and its implications for insurers’ results. The emphasis was on interpretation of the statistics rather than on new empirical data appearing in the public domain.
Market participants and observers will read the IUMI framing as a note of caution about headline figures. If premium growth is driven mainly by currency and portfolio composition, then reported increases offer limited reassurance about the longer term health of underwriting performance.
reports’s item is a concise account of IUMI’s public comments at its annual gathering. The report supplies the organisation’s broad conclusion that the offshore energy insurance market faced growing profitability pressures during the period under review, and it identifies Michele Cibrario as the committee chair who presented that assessment in Rotterdam.
Taken together, the publication’s reporting underscores the need to distinguish nominal premium movements from trends in claims, costs and technical performance when assessing market recovery. The IUMI assessment, as conveyed by reports on 25 September 2026, positions such distinctions at the centre of any evaluation of the sector’s prospects.