FM expands into high-value home insurance through PURE partnership

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FM expands into home insurance

Highlights

FM and PURE Insurance formed a long-term partnership to strengthen protection for high-value homes through engineering, research and loss prevention expertise.
The agreement includes a risk-sharing reinsurance arrangement under which FM will participate in PURE's underwriting results while helping improve resilience against complex risks such as wildfires.
FM and PURE aim to develop new approaches to property risk assessment and prevention that could strengthen long-term insurance outcomes for high-net-worth homeowners.

Partnership combines engineering and underwriting expertise

As reported by the Financial Times, FM has entered a strategic partnership with PURE Insurance, a reciprocal insurer serving high-net-worth families across the United States and Canada. The agreement expands FM's engineering-led risk management capabilities into the residential market while allowing the company to participate in PURE's underwriting results through a risk-sharing reinsurance agreement.

FM says the partnership is designed to combine its scientific research, engineering expertise and nearly two centuries of property loss prevention experience with PURE's underwriting capabilities. Together, the companies plan to help homeowners better understand property risks, strengthen resilience and prevent losses before they occur.

FM chairman and chief executive Malcolm Roberts says the companies share the view that most property losses are preventable through stronger understanding of risk and close collaboration with clients. He says the partnership provides an opportunity to bring FM's engineering expertise and research capabilities to high-value residential properties.

Focus on resilience and complex property risks

The companies say their initial efforts will focus on some of the most complex residential risks, including properties exposed to wildfires, where FM has decades of experience helping commercial clients improve resilience. FM's engineering approach assesses physical risks associated with individual buildings and recommends measures to reduce the likelihood and severity of losses.

Those recommendations may include enhanced fire detection systems, flood-resistant construction features, improved utility shut-off systems and landscaping designed to reduce wildfire exposure. PURE says combining its underwriting expertise with FM's engineering capabilities should improve risk assessment and support responsible expansion of its membership over time, including insuring certain properties that may previously have required a more cautious approach.

One insurance analyst cautions that premiums for high-value homes still depend largely on the total value at risk, meaning engineering improvements may not substantially reduce insurance costs in every case. Pressure on affordability also persists more broadly, with JPMorgan analysis indicating U.S. house price-to-income ratios are expected to remain near historic highs, while some wealthy homeowners increasingly turn to non-admitted insurance products in states such as California and Florida.

PURE currently serves more than 120,000 members across the United States and Canada and is part of Tokio Marine Group.

Our earlier coverage of the U.S. housing market highlighted how rising property taxes and homeowners insurance premiums have become a growing affordability challenge, particularly for owners of high-value properties.

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