Liberty Mutual is pursuing growth across commercial insurance while the market shifts from broad rate increases toward sharper differences by line. Property pricing is softening as capacity returns, and casualty rates are moderating even as claims trends remain a concern. Marc Orloff, who took over as president of the insurer’s Global Risk Solutions North America division in January 2025, says the company is concentrating on areas where it can grow prudently and serve clients effectively.
Orloff oversees commercial and specialty insurance operations in the United States, Canada and Bermuda. He joined Liberty Mutual in 2011, after starting his insurance career in Travelers’ development program in 2001. His Liberty Mutual roles have included major accounts, distribution leadership and rebuilding the company’s middle-market operation. In a recent interview with Business Insurance Editor Gavin Souter, he discussed pricing, risk selection, artificial intelligence and capital.
Pricing is diverging by line
Orloff describes the market as having shifted quickly after several years of hard conditions. Property faces the most pressure, but the picture varies by product. In catastrophe-exposed excess and surplus property, additional capacity is driving significant rate reductions. Midsize package property is also softening, though the change is less pronounced.
Specialty E&S is drawing more managing general agents and new sources of capacity. Liability, umbrella, excess and auto still command comparatively strong rates, but increases are easing. Orloff says the industry is approaching a point where pricing may no longer keep pace with loss trend, a concern for insurers assessing whether current rates adequately reflect the risks they cover.
That shift makes underwriting discipline more consequential. Liberty Mutual writes across a wide range of commercial products, from E&S catastrophe property to package coverage for midsize businesses. A single market label can obscure very different conditions across those segments, so the company’s choices about where to deploy capacity matter as pricing changes.
Excess casualty remains a difficult risk
Liberty Mutual is a sizable excess casualty writer, but Orloff characterizes the line as especially challenging. He points to what he calls persistent legal system abuse and uncertainty about the long-term exposure from mass torts, silica and PFAS claims. Those risks can accumulate over time, adding pressure to a line where insurers must evaluate layers of potential liability.
The company’s appetite varies with the size and location of the coverage. In the United States, it typically seeks to participate closer to the primary layer on lead accounts and writes business below $100 million. For its largest clients, it can provide substantial limits above that threshold. In Bermuda, Liberty Mutual writes above $100 million.
That structure reflects a measured approach to a volatile segment: the company remains active, while defining where it is prepared to provide capacity. Orloff’s comments also underscore the tension facing casualty insurers. Rates remain relatively firm, but moderation is underway and the underlying claims environment is difficult to quantify.
Growth is concentrated in selected businesses
Liberty Mutual’s diversification gives it room to add business across multiple areas, Orloff says, provided the opportunities meet its standards for prudent growth. In the U.S. midsize market, the company has seen success with technology, financial institutions, professional services and manufacturing clients. It also has a substantial private equity practice and recently launched a life sciences practice.
In specialty insurance, the company is investing in cyber, environmental, health care, financial lines, private-company and not-for-profit business. Through Ironshore, its focus in wholesale E&S is on casualty. Property is receiving less emphasis at present because of market conditions, while casualty deployment remains selective.
Infrastructure and construction are also established areas for Liberty Mutual, particularly data centers. Taken together, the areas Orloff identifies suggest that the insurer is directing effort toward businesses where it sees room to add customers and build expertise, while tempering property growth amid falling catastrophe rates.
AI is aimed at underwriting and claims work
Orloff sees artificial intelligence as a foundational capability across the business, with the most immediate use coming from everyday tools for underwriters, adjusters and other employees. In underwriting, he says, AI can bring more information about an account, its risks and its legal environment within reach of decision-makers. Used well, he argues, those tools can strengthen professional judgment.
The longer-term opportunity, in his view, is to let AI handle lower-value tasks while keeping people involved in decisions and customer work. That could give underwriters more time for risk assessment and allow claims adjusters to manage more files while maintaining service quality. Liberty Mutual’s stated aims include quoting more business, identifying accounts that fit its appetite, enabling more products and increasing claims capacity.
Orloff did not forecast staffing reductions. He framed the objective as improving efficiency and directing employees toward work that adds more value for customers. The practical measure will be whether tools improve throughput and decision quality as the company expands its business, rather than simply whether more tasks can be automated.
Reinsurance and capital shape risk capacity
Reinsurance gives Liberty Mutual flexibility, but insurers are retaining more catastrophe exposure than they did two years ago. Orloff estimates that company balance sheets absorbed about 40% of catastrophe losses then; the share is now closer to the mid-60% range. Reinsurance prices have eased, he says, but that relief sits alongside a larger retained share of risk.
Capital management is a central concern for Liberty Mutual as a mutual insurer. Orloff describes the investment and insurance operations as connected parts of the balance sheet, with closer coordination intended to help address customer needs. The company is considering how its own funds and third-party capital can support that work.
Liberty Mutual is also looking at sidecars and building relationships that could expand what it can offer clients and brokers. Reinsurance remains another tool in that capital strategy. The company’s challenge is to match capital and capacity to opportunities as market pricing shifts, while preserving room to absorb losses that insurers now retain in greater proportion.
For Orloff, the near-term picture combines selective expansion with close attention to pricing adequacy and risk accumulation. Property capacity is returning, casualty rates are easing, and more catastrophe exposure is staying on insurer balance sheets. Liberty Mutual’s growth plans will depend on how well it can direct underwriting expertise, technology and capital toward risks it understands and is prepared to carry.