Munich Re survey flags widening risk protection gap for P&C insurers

Munich Re and the Insurance Information Institute launched RiskScan 2026 on June 8, pairing the survey with more than 1,700 respondents and a warning that protection gaps are widening faster than coverage. The release out of Malvern, Pennsylvania, matters for P&C software because the problem is no longer only pricing; it is whether underwriting, exposure management, and product systems can absorb new risk signals quickly enough.

The report was commissioned with RTi Research and compared 2026 findings with the original 2024 RiskScan survey. The PDF said the 2026 study captured insights from more than 800 individuals across five market segments: US-based consumers, small business owners, middle-market decision-makers, P&C insurance agents/brokers, and P&C insurance carriers. That cross-section gives carriers and vendors a cleaner view of where underwriting friction shows up, from quote intake to portfolio steering.

Coverage around the survey pointed to the risks most likely to drive that friction: cyber incidents, artificial intelligence exposures, economic uncertainty, business interruption, floods and wildfires. One industry article tied to the research put the protection gap at $424 billion, a figure that reinforces how much exposure remains outside standard coverage or sits in products that no longer match the hazard profile. Insurance Business also said the survey showed growing alignment between buyers and sellers on the top risks, a useful signal for carriers trying to design products that do not lag customer demand.

For software buyers, the implication is direct. If an insurer cannot ingest external data at quote time, update appetite quickly, or connect claims and loss trends to reinsurance strategy, then the system stack becomes part of the protection gap. That is where modern underwriting workbenches, exposure-management tools, and portfolio analytics platforms matter most. They have to support granular segmentation, faster referral logic, and product changes that reflect changing flood, wildfire, cyber, and AI-related exposure patterns instead of waiting for annual product refreshes.

Triple-I said on June 10 that organizations across the insurance value chain were navigating an increasingly complex risk landscape and needed more integrated approaches to resilience. For carriers, MGAs, reinsurers, and the vendors that serve them, RiskScan 2026 reads as a workflow test: the firms that can translate outside intelligence into rating, coverage design, and portfolio action will be better positioned than those still treating risk data as an annual report rather than an operational input.