Your client is getting money back from their property carrier. FM has announced it will return an estimated $855 million to eligible clients through its resilience credit program in 2027 — a 10% offset against premium, for the second year running. That is the easy headline, and it will take care of itself at renewal. The broker’s real job is the conversation that comes before it: what is this money actually for?
The short answer is that the credit is not a discount. It is prevention funding, and FM has been explicit about that since the program began. A broker who lets a client treat it as found money — a pleasant reduction in the insurance line — has wasted the one mechanism in the market that pays a client to fix the risks their own engineers have already identified.
What the credit actually is
The resilience credit will be applied as a 10% premium offset against eligible FM policies that renew, or reach an anniversary, between January 1 and December 31, 2027. FM puts the estimated total at $855 million, up from about $825 million in 2026.
FM is a mutual, and the credit exists because of that structure. The company attributes it to extraordinary results and historically low losses: when policyholders’ loss prevention efforts produce strong results, the mutual returns part of the value to the policyholders who created it. The resilience credit sits on top of FM’s separate membership credit — a record $1.5 billion announced in April — rather than replacing it.
Two details matter for the renewal conversation. First, eligibility is FM’s determination: the offset applies to eligible policies, and confirming which of a client’s policies qualify is a question for the FM account team, not an assumption to build into a proposal. Second, the 10% is calculated on the client’s own eligible premium. On a large account in a softening market — where big property placements are already seeing double-digit rate reductions — that is a serious number. On a smaller account, it is a contribution toward improvement work, not a budget for it.
Why it comes with a list attached
FM introduced the resilience credit in 2022, initially to help clients address climate-related risks such as wind, flood and wildfire. The program has since widened to operational risks as well as climate hazards, and the offset has doubled from 5% to 10%.
The design has not changed. Clients are meant to use the credit, together with FM’s engineering and analytics, to carry out FM’s risk improvement recommendations — the flood defences, roof upgrades, fire protection and business continuity measures already sitting in the client’s engineering reports. As FM’s chairman and chief executive, Malcolm Roberts, put it: “When our clients invest in loss prevention and achieve strong results, our mutual model allows us to support further improvements, creating a powerful circle of resilience.”
Underneath the program is FM’s long-held position that most loss is preventable. The credit is that position expressed as money. Its value to a client is therefore not the 10% itself — it is the loss that does not happen because a recommendation finally got funded.
The timing problem most clients will hit
Here is the trap. The credit attaches to 2027 renewals and anniversaries, but the work it exists to fund cannot be improvised in a renewal meeting. A roof programme needs scoping, specification and contractor capacity. Flood defences need engineering sign-off. Fire protection upgrades compete for capital approval against every other project in the client’s budget.
A client who first hears about the credit at renewal has already missed the planning window. The spending has to be sequenced — recommendation, cost estimate, internal approval, scheduled work — and that sequence starts months before the policy anniversary it is meant to support. The brokers who earn their place in this program are the ones having the conversation in the client’s capital planning cycle, not in the renewal presentation.
What to tell clients now
- Pull the current FM engineering recommendation list. Not last year’s summary — the live list, with open items separated from completed ones.
- Cost the open items. A recommendation without a number attached cannot compete for capital; a priced one can be matched against the expected credit.
- Sequence the work against the credit. Show the client which improvements the 10% offset covers outright, which it part-funds, and which need their own capital case.
- Confirm eligibility policy by policy. Do not let a client plan spending around an offset on a policy FM has not confirmed as eligible.
- Put the plan in the renewal file. A documented improvement plan, tied to the carrier’s own recommendations, is evidence at renewal that the credit is being used as intended.
The honest limits
This is an FM program for FM clients. It does nothing for the rest of a broker’s book, and it should not be oversold inside the accounts it does reach: $855 million is FM’s estimate, and a results-driven program can change with results.
Nor is the credit a substitute for the harder conversation. A client can bank the offset, leave every recommendation open, and arrive at the next loss with the same exposures FM flagged the year before. The credit funds prevention; it does not perform it. Your client’s engineers already wrote the list. The broker’s job, this quarter rather than at renewal, is to make sure the money and the list meet.
Sources: Insurance Business, “FM to return $855 million to clients through 2027 resilience credit,” October 2026; FM, “FM Announces US$855 Million Resilience Credit to Support Investment in Risk Reduction,” PR Newswire, October 2026.