Walking into Monte Carlo this year, it will only take a quick scan of the meeting schedules to realise that the tailwinds of the hard market are officially giving way to a tougher, more competitive reality.
After years of hard market conditions driven by steep rate increases and tight capacity, the market cycle is softening. Margins are coming under pressure, underwriting profits are under scrutiny, and corporate budgets are being trimmed.
In this environment, the traditional mandate of the B2B insurance marketer is facing a reckoning.
For decades, marketing within reinsurance, particularly among brokers, ILS managers, and capital specialists, focused almost exclusively on “air cover.”
The playbook was familiar: brand visibility, polished thought leadership reports, event sponsorships, and hospitality suites overlooking the Mediterranean.
Marketing operated far upstream from revenue generation, while origination and deal-making were left strictly to line brokers and underwriters.
And while you’re likely to see plenty of hospitality in Monte (and a fair bit of thought leadership!), any separation between marketing and sales in this market is a liability.
To thrive in a softening market, companies need senior marketers who can step onto the field as part of the commercial engine, or “Full Funnel Marketers”.
Are you full funnel?
While the market environment will be challenging to some, a full funnel marketer will integrate three disciplines that historically lived in separate silos:
First, they’ll possess direct marketing capabilities. This includes hyper-targeted messaging directly to specific risk officers, cedents, and institutional investors, through targeted emails, bespoke executive briefings, and account-based outreach.
These direct capabilities will need to be matched with a toolkit of performance marketing tricks. FFM’s need data-driven, attribution-led acquisition tactics that track digital engagement, measure intent signals, and optimise return on marketing spend. If you can’t prove ROI, don’t expect your star to rise in this market!
And then there’s “biz dev”. If you’re an insurance marketer uncomfortable with sales, then get comfortable with it. In this market, you’ll need deep commercial acumen, warm contact books, and the ability to join executive meetings, articulate complex risk transfer structures, and build genuine client connection.
Finding this blended skillset in a single senior leader has historically been rare in reinsurance. Practitioners were usually either creative brand specialists or corporate communications leads. However, as rivalry intensifies between consolidated global brokers and nimble alternative capital specialists, companies can no longer afford marketers who only know how to spend budget rather than help generate pipeline.
Buyer dynamics and the market
The urgency for full funnel marketing is rooted in fundamental B2B buyer psychology and economic theory – something I’ve been having a little read about as part of my own professional development journey.
During a hard market, capacity is scarce. Buyer behaviour is transactional, cedents are desperate for coverage, and simple brand visibility is often enough to land on a short list. But as the market softens, power shifts back to the buyer.
According to modern B2B purchasing research (such as Gartner’s B2B Buyer Journey model), complex risk decisions are now made by multi-stakeholder buying committees who complete over 70% of their research before ever speaking to a broker or capital provider.
Furthermore, concepts from commercial alignment models like The Challenger Sale (which Rhotic’s own biz dev team is familiar with) demonstrate that when prices fall and products commoditise, buyers reward firms that bring proactive, insight-led value directly to their strategic challenges.
In a soft market, a cedent’s chief risk officer doesn’t just need to know who you are; they need to understand how your specific capital structure or retrocession strategy solves their capital efficiency problem.
A Full Funnel Marketer understands these buyer dynamics. They use performance tracking to spot early buying intent, craft direct content that frames the commercial problem, and actively assist business development teams in converting those signals into high-value client conversations.
The litmus test
At RVS, this dynamic will be on full display. The firms that succeed across the café tables at the Fairmont and Hermitage won’t be those with the largest logos on their notebooks.
They will be the ones whose marketing leaders actively arm their origination teams with account-based intelligence, directly facilitate introductions, and demonstrate fluent understanding of both client pain points and alternative capital vehicles. Good luck!
- Joe McGrath is the CEO and founder of Rhotic Media