A report of 1,273 insurers known to have failed across 98 countries since 2000 has been released by Canada's Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation.

Of that total, 843 were property and casualty insurers, 372 were life insurers, 27 were composite insurers writing both lines, and 31 were reinsurers.

Alister Campbell, CEO of PACICC, said the research, led by PACICC chief economist Grant Kelly and research associate Judy (Zhe) Peng, showed insurer failure remains a live risk in both developed and developing markets.

"This massive research project provides us with compelling evidence regarding the continuing risk of insurer failure, in both developing as well as developed economies. And last year's uptick in insolvencies, reversing a favourable five-year trend, may signal an important market turn," Campbell said.

Recorded failures have grown faster with each edition

The catalogue's second edition, published in 2024, recorded 568 failed insurers across 57 jurisdictions since 2000. The third edition, published in mid-2025, recorded 965 failures across 71 countries and 119 jurisdictions.

This fourth edition records 1,273 failures across 98 countries, an increase of more than 300 in roughly a year. PACICC described the catalogue as the world's most comprehensive publicly available database of failed insurers and says an average of 43 insurers fail globally each year.

Kelly, the report's lead author, said the research shows failures clustering in specific jurisdictions after periods of apparent stability rather than occurring at a steady rate.

"It would be very risky to assume that, because an insurer has not failed recently in a given jurisdiction, it never will. Our research identifies clusters of insurer failures that occurred 118 times across 59 jurisdictions since 2000, often after sustained periods of relative calm. This should serve as a sobering reminder to all financial services sector stakeholders of the risks of complacency," Kelly said.

More than 65% of all insurer failures worldwide, 65.7%, occur as part of a cluster, defined as three or more failures within a three-year span, according to the report. The research also found that long stretches without insolvencies are normal for individual jurisdictions.

Report identifies a policyholder protection gap outside North America

The report found that most policyholders affected by insurer failures outside North America had no policyholder protection mechanism, such as a guarantee fund or compensation scheme, in place at the time their insurer collapsed.

Campbell called on the International Association of Insurance Supervisors to address the gap directly.

"While the International Association of Insurance Supervisors continues to set standards for best practice in supervisory regimes, it has yet to embed an expectation regarding the existence of policyholder protection mechanisms within its core standards," Campbell said. "Outside of North America, the majority of failures recorded in our Catalogue happened in jurisdictions with no policyholder protection mechanism in place. They are a core component of an effective financial services safety net, and should be championed more vigorously. We can and must do better."

Campbell has made similar calls to the IAIS in each prior edition of the catalogue.

Why this matters for the global insurance industry

For regulators and supervisory authorities in jurisdictions without an established guarantee scheme, the catalogue's findings provide evidence to support building policyholder protection mechanisms before a failure occurs.

For insurers and reinsurers operating across multiple jurisdictions, the report's clustering pattern indicates that a market's recent stability is not a reliable indicator of ongoing solvency risk, particularly in regions where supervisory regimes and protection schemes remain less developed than in North America, the UK or the EU.