Dive Brief:
- Transactional risk insurance pricing is rising after several years of declines amid a resurgence in merger-and-acquisition activity marked by larger and more complex deals, according to Marsh research.
- The 2025 Global Transactional Risk Insurance Report found that pricing rose across geographic regions in 2025, reversing a sustained post-pandemic decline. Average premiums for representations and warranties insurance — a type of coverage that protects buyers and sellers against deal-related losses — rose 16% in North America and 8% in Asia, while Europe saw a 5% increase. Pricing in the U.K. and Pacific regions was broadly flat after several years of declines.
- “Prices are starting to increase, primarily driven by claim activity,” Craig Schioppo, global head of transactional risk at Marsh, said in an email. He hesitated to characterize the shift as the start of a hardening market, saying it likely reflects a return to pricing levels seen a few years ago.
Dive Insight:
The increase came as global M&A deal values climbed to nearly $5 trillion in 2025, driven by a surge in “mega-deals,” including 70 transactions worth more than $10 billion — an 81% jump year over year — and 617 deals above $1 billion, Marsh said.
The insurance broker said it placed a record $91.6 billion in transactional risk insurance limits globally in 2025, up 34% year over year, reflecting stronger demand for deal protection as transactions became larger and more complex and dealmakers increasingly turned to insurance to manage risk.
Meanwhile, companies are also seeing more disputes tied to M&A as deal activity regains momentum and macroeconomic pressures, including interest rate and currency shifts, increasingly spill into post-closing conflicts, according to a recent report from consulting firm Berkeley Research Group, based in Emeryville, California.
About 34% of respondents said indemnity provisions and representations and warranties insurance were present in disputes last year, according to the firm, which surveyed more than 200 attorneys, private equity professionals and corporate finance advisors globally.
“In the U.S., if you have a reps and warranties policy and something goes wrong post-closing, it’s almost customary to file a claim and sort it out later,” Frank Dery, a Chicago-based managing director at BRG, said in the report. “Very few ultimately pay out, but the presence of insurance encourages parties to take the first step and file a claim to investigate the issue more so than if they did not have the policy in place.”
