Property Resilience Can Improve Insurance Terms, but Premium Credits Remain Rare
Property resilience appears to matter more in insurance negotiations than in underwriting spreadsheets. Owners are upgrading buildings and preparing for disruption, but insurers don’t consistently translate those efforts into explicit premium credits. The financial benefit often comes indirectly: stronger risk profiles can attract more capacity and improve discussions over deductibles and coverage.
That distinction matters in a competitive property market. Blake Giannisis, executive vice president and North American property practice leader at Hub International in New York, said resilience remains a differentiator, especially for companies exposed to long business interruptions. Insurers continue to seek loss-control improvements, and a more resilient account may draw additional capacity. But, he cautioned, “It’s not a direct correlation to a premium reduction for doing that one thing.”
Marsh’s 2026 Climate Adaptation Survey, released last week, points to a recognition gap: just 26% of more than 120 organizations surveyed worldwide said insurers had acknowledged their adaptation work during negotiations.
Investment can strengthen the negotiating position
Prologis has tightened construction specifications, including extending the expected life of some roofs from 20 years to 30. The logistics real estate company owns and develops about 6,000 properties across 20 countries. Its buildings use products “intended for a longer, more durable life cycle,” said Jeff Bray, the company’s San Francisco-based senior vice president and head of global risk management.
In some years, Prologis has also spent millions of dollars voluntarily retrofitting properties exposed to earthquakes. The goal is to make buildings more resilient and reduce disruption to customers if an earthquake occurs. Bray said he couldn’t identify direct premium savings across the portfolio tied to those investments. He does see them as a way to distinguish the company with underwriters and improve its position on capacity, deductibles and coverage terms.
He described the work as “a strong signaling tool” that shows insurers Prologis is reinvesting in its properties and “becoming a better risk.” The company also raises operational preparations, including disaster response and backup power, in insurer discussions. Yet those measures aren’t consistently recorded as data points, Bray said.
For Raymond Chiusano, AXA XL’s New York-based head of property for the East zone, resilience has value in both hard and soft insurance markets. Prepared companies may prevent or limit losses, recover faster and reduce downtime, while potentially securing more stable capacity over time. Insurers and risk engineers work with policyholders on changing exposures, from facility improvements to emergency response and recovery planning.
The priorities vary by industry. Health care organizations focus heavily on preventing and responding to water losses. Life sciences companies and manufacturers can address supply-chain exposure by vetting suppliers, finding alternative sources and holding buffer inventory. Leak sensors and water-flow technology can alert commercial property owners to abnormal use before a small leak causes major damage.
“If an insured is proactive with those items of resilience, I’m more willing to put out more capacity,” Chiusano said.
Better data can make mitigation count
A central obstacle is measurement. Catastrophe models and other risk tools can struggle to reflect mitigation, which makes it harder for underwriters to connect resilience investments with expected losses. Existing models can account for some property-level measures, but community-wide work may be more difficult to quantify, said Kim Roberts, Marsh Re’s North America head of peril advisory.
“We need to be able to speak the language of reinsurance and insurance, and translate these actions into measurable metrics,” Roberts said at a Marsh-sponsored panel during Climate Week NYC last week.
There are examples of insurers recognizing mitigation when its effect can be assessed. Last year, The Nature Conservancy and Willis Towers Watson developed a $2.5 million wildfire policy for the Tahoe Donner homeowners association in California. A specialty managing general agent analyzed forest management work, including tree thinning and prescribed burns. The resulting policy carried a 39% lower premium and an 84% lower deductible than it would have without that resilience work, according to Deborah Glaser, the Nature Conservancy’s Los Angeles-based project director for disaster resilience.
Catastrophe models can incorporate many resilience features when they have detailed building information, said Glen Daraskevich, executive vice president at Boston-based modeler Karen Clark & Co. Depending on the peril, inputs can include roof cover, glass type and building elevation. Models can use those details to estimate losses across measures such as expected losses and probable maximum losses.
Information still has to travel from risk managers to insurers and into the models. New mitigation work may be missed if models aren’t updated often enough, Daraskevich said. Some models can also reflect community-level flood and wildfire measures when data is available. Multiple interventions can produce double-digit changes in modeled losses, though the result depends on the hazard and other factors.
The practical takeaway for property owners is that resilience can support insurance negotiations even when a specific credit isn’t available. Clear, measurable records of building upgrades and operational plans give insurers more to assess—and may help turn risk reduction into capacity and coverage terms.
Gavin Souter contributed to this report.