As year-end renewals approach, market conditions in property insurance are becoming more favorable for certain risk profiles. However, despite easing pricing conditions, requirements for data quality, accuracy and regular updates remain high.
What is your view of the property insurance market as we approach the end of 2026? And how are these market developments changing the expectations of risk managers, brokers and insurers?
A cross-perspective discussion with Benoît Cordesse, CEO, and Rodolphe Lemasson, Sales Director at SENOEE.
With year-end renewals just a few months away, how do you assess the property insurance market in 2026?
Rodolphe Lemasson : The market remains particularly focused on the quality of asset valuations, even though pricing conditions have generally eased since the beginning of the year.
This easing of market conditions has not led to any relaxation in documentation requirements. In fact, the most thoroughly documented submissions, supported by the most accurate valuations, continue to secure the most favorable conditions at renewal. The most thoroughly documented and accurately valued submissions remain the best positioned to secure favorable terms at renewal.
Since January, we have also seen growing demand from our clients for more frequent and granular valuations, particularly for capital-intensive sites.
For some companies we are working with for the first time, the process sometimes starts even further upstream: precisely defining the scope of the insured portfolio, identifying all locations, consolidating floor areas, and accurately classifying the activities.
The market may appear more favorable for certain risk profiles today. Does this shift actually change the level of expectations placed on companies?
Rodolphe Lemasson : No and that is precisely an important point to emphasize.
A softer pricing environment doesn't reduce the level of rigor expected when it comes to the data provided. Insurers and reinsurers continue to expect accurate, well-documented and up-to-date valuations.
Considering that more favorable market conditions allow companies to postpone their valuation exercise would therefore be a mistake. In fact, it is precisely during such periods that differences in the quality of submissions can become particularly apparent.
This focus on data quality was also recently highlighted by the ACPR.
Why has data quality become such a strategic issue in managing property risks?
Benoit Cordesse : Because data has become the foundation of every decision in property risk management, whether it involves setting a premium, determining an appropriate deductible, or defining a risk prevention plan.
Incorrect or outdated data therefore undermines all downstream analysis, whether carried out by the company, its broker or its insurer.
Our conviction is that technical data should now be regarded as a genuine asset: it must be structured, verified and kept up to date, and leveraged to support insurance, risk prevention and corporate decision-making.
Companies already have access to a wide range of tools : ERP systems, CMMS and other business applications. Yet we still see significant gaps in their actual knowledge of their portfolios: asset locations, geographical distribution, equipment characteristics, or the level of detail available.
In light of these developments, what core conviction guides SENOEE’s positioning today?
Benoit Cordesse : The reliability of a valuation cannot rely solely on an algorithm.
Technology can accelerate, structure and standardize the way information is processed. But the relevance of a valuation still relies on the expertise of a professional who can understand a site, its operations and its specific characteristics.
Rodolphe Lemasson : As artificial intelligence tools continue to develop rapidly across our industry, our conviction is clear: the objective is not to replace the expert.
The objective is to equip experts with the tools they need to produce structured, standardized data more efficiently, making it directly usable across the entire insurance value chain.
SENOEE operates at the intersection of technical expertise, data and technology. How do you bring these three dimensions together in practice?
Benoit Cordesse : They are clearly inseparable.
The expert remains at the heart of the process, working on site to identify the assets, understand the site’s specific characteristics and validate the resulting valuations.
The information collected is then structured according to a common, standardized framework.This makes the data comparable across sites and across industries.
Technology acts as an accelerator. Through our platform Assessit makes field data collection more reliable, facilitates information processing and improves how that information is delivered to our clients.
The objective is to ensure that technology enhances expertise.
What role does SENOEE aim to play alongside risk managers, brokers and insurers?
Rodolphe Lemasson : Our role is not to replace the risk manager in managing the insurance program, the broker in their advisory role, or the insurer in their underwriting decisions.
We aim to provide them with a common foundation: factual and sufficiently robust information that enables each stakeholder to build their own analysis.
This position enables us to engage with all stakeholders and help streamline discussions that still too often rely on values drawn from different sources, based on inconsistent methodologies or insufficiently updated.
What feedback from the field is currently having the greatest influence on the evolution of your solutions?
Rodolphe Lemasson : Two expectations stand out in particular: simplicity and the ability to quickly access relevant information.
For our experts, the objective is to spend more time analyzing the site and less time re-entering or formatting the information collected.
For our insurer and broker clients, expectations are more focused on the clarity of reporting and the ability to track changes in values over time, site by site.
These use cases are directly reflected in our development priorities.
How are these findings shaping the developments SENOEE is currently working on?
Benoit Cordesse : These findings have led us to fundamentally rethink how our platform structures and presents information.
The first building block will be Portfolio. It will enable site characteristics to be defined according to standardized frameworks, while adapting them to each client’s specific organizational structure whether financial, operational or geographical.
The objective is twofold: to keep data collection simple while providing our clients with a more structured view of their portfolio, enabling them to track changes in values over time and better align the different valuation categories.
This development is also accompanied by ongoing work on our security standards and on aligning our tools with the requirements of the ISO/IEC 27001 framework.
What tangible impact should SENOEE’s upcoming developments have for the different users of the data?
Benoit Cordesse : For a risk manager, the key is to have more direct access to reliable, up-to-date information, without having to piece it together from multiple stakeholders.
For a broker or insurer, the objective is to work with consistent, comparable and substantiated information across different sites or portfolios.
For our experts, the objective is straightforward : to reduce the time spent on data re-entry and formatting and redirect it to where their expertise truly adds value on site and in the analysis.
If risk managers were to take away just one key message as they prepare for the end of 2026, what would you want it to be?
Benoit Cordesse : Do not wait for a loss to discover that a value has become outdated or that critical information was missing.
Rodolphe Lemasson : As year-end renewals approach, the right approach is to ensure that the data underpinning the insurance program still reflects the current reality of the sites and assets not their situation several years ago.
This approach first enables companies to better manage their exposure. It also allows them to enter discussions with brokers and insurers with a more robust, better-documented submission that more accurately reflects the actual risk.
In property insurance, data quality is no longer just a valuation issue. It has become a prerequisite for effective risk management.
