Look Out Below If Rates Keep Falling

Talking with underwriters, agents and analysts these days, you can tell from the sighs and the nervous laughter, the looks of chagrin, and the shaking of heads that they are nervous about a softening market in the not-so-distant future.

Industry-wide profits for the first three quarters more than tripled to $21.1 billion. Surplus is up 12.1 percent–thats a gain of $34.5 billion in nine months! Net investment gains grew 31.3 percent. Premium growth is still relatively healthy at 10.1 percent (although it slowed from nearly 14 percent through three quarters in 2002).

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader

Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© Touchpoint Markets, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more inforrmation visit Asset & Logo Licensing.