Aon's 2026 Global Medical Trend Rates Report confirms a global average gross medical trend rate of 9.8% for 2026. A reduction year on year but still three times worldwide general inflation. Running at double digits in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Regional disparities are stark, e.g. with the Middle East & Africa at 15.3% and Europe at 8.2%. Trend is structural, not temporary.

Top 5 conditions driving global plan costs in 2026:
(1) Cardiovascular — #1 in every region; (2) Cancer/tumour growth — including Switzerland in the top 20 countries most impacted; (3) Hypertension; (4) Diabetes; (5) Musculoskeletal — new entry in the top 5 for 2026.

For Swiss companies managing international employee health programmes, this means one thing: every renewal should be proactively prepared on plan structure, covers, preventive care incentives, and market benchmarking is essential to achieve fair pricing.

Most SMEs and NGOs assume their cyber insurance covers them. But in the current geopolitical environment — state-sponsored attacks are surging since the Iran conflict began — the "act of war" exclusion in most standard cyber policies has become the most dangerous clause in your entire insurance programme. Lloyd's revised its cyber war exclusion clauses in 2023. Many policies written before then carry exclusions that were never designed for the current threat landscape. The gap between "ransomware coverage" and "state-sponsored attack coverage" is enormous — and most organisations don't know which side of that line they're on.

A new report based on data from over one million SME clients confirms what we see every week in practice: more than half of internationally active SMEs are underinsured on at least three major risk categories. The most underaddressed? International liability. D&O exposure in foreign subsidiaries. Product liability in markets with different legal standards. Business interruption that crosses borders. The cost of discovering this gap during a claim is existential. The cost of closing it during today's soft insurance market is surprisingly affordable. At Marvan, our first conversation with a new client is always a structured coverage gap analysis across all their international exposures. It's free. It's fast. And it almost always surfaces something significant.

In the Gulf, war risk premiums have jumped to multiples of pre-conflict levels. Kidnap & Ransom, medical evacuation and field asset covers are being repriced fast — and some underwriters are simply declining to quote for certain geographies. For humanitarian organisations and foundations, these are not peripheral covers. They are mission-critical protections for the people sent into the field. At Marvan, our clients have direct access to the Lloyd's specialty markets — the only place where these risks can still be placed at reasonable terms.

A quiet but important change came into force in Switzerland on January 1, 2026: all insurance brokers must now be registered in the FINMA-recognised VBV register for continuous training programs. What this means practically for clients : before you sign or renew any insurance contract, check that your insurance broker holds valid FINMA registration and has completed the mandatory continuing professional development requirements under www.finma.ch.

India just opened its insurance sector to 100% foreign ownership — a historic first since the sector was privatised in 2000. This is not a small regulatory tweak. It is a structural transformation of one of the world's largest and fastest-growing insurance markets. For Swiss SMEs, NGOs and foundations with operations or subsidiaries in India, the practical implication is significant: you can now coordinate fully integrated international insurance programmes, with local covers that are both IRDAI-compliant and governed from Switzerland.