IAIS GIMAR 2025: What Insurance Leaders Should Do Next
The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has released the Global Insurance Market Report (GIMAR) 2025 from Basel. The headline: capital strength is solid, liquidity is steady, earnings are healthy, and systemic risk edged down. Supervisors are zeroing in on three fronts: the surge in private credit allocations, pressures from geoeconomic fragmentation, and AI's fast rise across the value chain. Climate and cyber oversight remain core priorities.
State of the sector
Insurers maintained strong capital buffers and stable liquidity. Non-life carriers improved combined ratios in several regions, while life insurers benefited from market tailwinds and wider spreads. Large international groups saw a small decline in systemic risk indicators, and insurance still has a far smaller systemic footprint than banking. Market expectations for 2026 remain steady despite geopolitical and economic uncertainty.
Supervisory architecture
The IAIS completed its review of the individual insurer monitoring methodology, strengthening the way systemic risk is assessed. The Financial Stability Board reaffirmed its reliance on the IAIS Holistic Framework to assess risk patterns in insurance.
Private credit: rising exposure, practical guardrails
Holdings of private credit are moving higher, especially among life insurers. This can match long-term liabilities and offer illiquidity compensation, but it introduces valuation uncertainty, liquidity constraints, borrower quality concerns and structural complexity. The findings echo the IAIS Issues Paper on shifts in the life sector, including alternative assets and cross-border asset-intensive reinsurance.
- Set hard limits by tranche, sector and seniority; avoid concentration creep.
- Upgrade valuation playbooks for sparse pricing and weak comparables.
- Stress refinancing, downgrade cycles and secondary market exits.
- Tighten covenants and monitoring for sponsor and borrower quality.
- Map collateral, waterfall terms and control rights-no black boxes.
Geoeconomic fragmentation: ALM and liquidity under pressure
Trade frictions, sanctions, uneven monetary policy and uneven market conditions are lifting volatility. For cross-border groups, this complicates asset-liability management and liquidity planning. Supervisors are expanding scenario analysis, asking for more granular data and coordinating more closely across jurisdictions.
- Run multi-jurisdiction stress tests for basis risk, trapped capital and collateral calls.
- Pre-position liquidity and test fungibility assumptions under stress.
- Review reinsurance recoverables and counterparty concentrations by region.
- Keep a playbook for sanctions updates and cross-border transfer frictions.
AI in underwriting, pricing and claims: value with new risks
Insurers report efficiency gains as AI adoption spreads across the front, middle and back office. The report flags model oversight, transparency, cyber exposure, operational risk, data bias and reliance on external providers as key concerns. The IAIS Application Paper offers guidance for responsible integration.
- Maintain a live inventory of AI models with owners, data lineage and intended use.
- Set standards for explainability and performance drift; audit regularly.
- Strengthen third-party risk controls: SLAs, resilience, data rights and exit plans.
- Integrate AI incidents into operational risk, cyber response and compliance workflows.
- Document fairness testing and remediation for sensitive features and proxies.
Climate and protection gaps
Portfolio climate exposures stayed broadly steady, while underwriting data show shifting natural catastrophe coverage and reinsurance needs. More carriers and supervisors are running climate scenario analysis, even with data and methodology gaps. A special GIMAR edition on protection gaps underscores the push to strengthen climate-risk tools.
- Refresh nat-cat views of risk; recalibrate pricing, retentions and aggregates.
- Prioritise data improvements for physical and transition risks; close model blind spots.
- Align climate scenarios with investment, underwriting and reinsurance decisions.
Reinsurance: capital and discipline hold
Reinsurers entered 2024 well-capitalised, with results stabilising after earlier heavy catastrophe years. Premiums increased, retentions ticked up and investment portfolios stayed conservative. Expect continued focus on contract clarity, attachment points and capital efficiency.
What this means for insurance leaders
- Board priorities: private credit risk appetite, AI governance, climate and cyber oversight.
- Risk: tighten model risk management for AI and valuation risk for private assets.
- ALM: test liquidity under policy divergence and market fragmentation scenarios.
- Data: prepare for deeper supervisory requests across assets, models and scenarios.
- Operations: refresh cyber and vendor risk frameworks for AI-heavy workflows.
Near-term checklist (next 90 days)
- Approve private credit limits and early-warning indicators; confirm reporting cadence.
- Run a cross-border liquidity drill with sanctions and collateral shocks.
- Stand up an AI model register, minimum controls and an audit plan.
- Update nat-cat reinsurance purchasing with latest hazard and exposure data.
- Kick off a climate scenario pilot; document gaps and remediation steps.
- Validate cyber incident playbooks against AI-enabled attack paths.
What's next from the IAIS
The IAIS will broaden monitoring of alternative assets, advance systemic-risk analysis and prepare supervisory guidance for structural changes in the life sector. It will also refine climate-risk and protection-gap work across its 2026-2027 programme. Insurers should expect more granular data requests and deeper scenario expectations-and plan accordingly.
Leadership perspectives reflect this direction. IAIS Executive Committee Chair Toshiyuki Miyoshi highlighted the sector's resilience while calling for stronger governance, risk management and monitoring to address private credit growth, geoeconomic pressures and AI. Secretary General Jonathan Dixon emphasised the IAIS focus on spotting emerging risks and supporting supervisors to keep the sector stable and resilient.
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