Aon clients recovered around $3 billion (€2.6 billion) in 2025 through their transactional risk insurance coverages, the insurance brokerage firm announced this Wednesday.
These insurances are mainly linked to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) operations and offer protection ranging from indemnities to various contingent risks associated with these transactions.
"The increase in frequency, greater severity, and changes in notification patterns are having a direct impact on the M&A insurance market," said Stephen Davidson, Global Head of Claims for Transaction Solutions at Aon.
During the last fiscal year, claims activity in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region intensified, with notifications rising from 70 in 2024 to 119 in 2025. Furthermore, in 2025, the trend of early notifications consolidated, with a claim registered in 9.5% of policies placed by Aon as of December 31, 2025, reflecting greater maturity in the underwriting process, broader policies in terms of coverage, and claims being filed over a longer span of the policy lifecycle.
In EMEA, the main source of notifications continues to be linked to tax matters, accounting for over 20% of the total. Due to the usual nature of audit activity in the region, this behavior "is expected and does not translate into paid losses." For their part, breaches related to financial statements represent a slightly smaller proportion of notifications, although they constitute the main source of indemnities paid by this type of insurance.
In North America, policyholders recovered over $1 billion (€866 million) through these transactional policies, reaching a historic high for this market.
In that region, regulatory non-compliance remains the most common type of breach, accounting for over 20% of notifications. Material contracts, financial statements, and tax breaches each account for over 10% of notifications. Claims related to intellectual property rose from representing approximately 5% of all losses between 2019 and 2024 to around 10% of the total in 2025.