NEW YORK--Pronouncements by analysts about soft casualty insurance prices are based on inaccurate broker surveys and are overblown, a top insurance executive told an industry conference here yesterday.

"The pricing pressure is not as severe as what's being reported," said W.R. Berkley Corp. Chairman William Berkley.

"I think we've got a lot of people crying wolf right now," he added, directing his comments toward V.J. Dowling, managing partner of Dowling & Partners Securities based in Hartford, Conn., who participated with Mr. Berkley during the opening panel of the 18th Annual Executive Conference for the Property-Casualty Industry in New York yesterday.

Another executive in a separate talk said later that he expects excess capital to unleash undisciplined pricing and unreasonable competition.

Mr. Dowling, who didn't specifically say that prices were sliding, did say that he was concerned about "casualty [lines] in general right now."

He was responding to a question posed by Moderator Peter Porrino, global director of the insurance industry services practice of Ernst & Young in New York, who asked each panelist to identify one risk they worry about.

Dan Carmichael, chief executive officer of Ohio Casualty Corporation, responded before Mr. Dowling, saying that he was worried about how soft the market will become.

"I don't worry much about [catastrophe risk]. What I do worry about is [whether] the models that we put in place [are] really going to carry us forward," Mr. Carmichael said, referring specifically to multivariate rating programs used in personal lines.

Mr. Dowling followed with a string of comments outlining his concerns about the casualty market.

"When London underwriters start telling me they're coming over to get a piece of that nice stable U.S. casualty business, I get worried," he said.

Mr. Dowling went over other factors contributing to his concerns about casualty lines.

He mentioned federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act pressures to report earnings that are closer to ultimate results (with little fat in reserves to buoy future profits), short-term thinking on Wall Street, offshore competitors that can write on a tax-advantaged basis, and stable claims trends that could turn.

Mr. Berkley responded that Mr. Dowling's reports, published in a weekly analysis known as IBNR Weekly, "refer to broker surveys with an awesome level of confidence."

"Ninety-five percent of all statistics are made up," the CEO of Greenwich, Conn.-based W.R. Berkley Corp. said, speculating on how the figures in broker surveys are obtained. If you call a broker on a day when he just lost a piece of business to a company charging 20 percent lower rates, and ask that broker how rates are holding up, he'll say the market is "terrible," Mr. Berkley said.

"If they bothered to ask companies, they'd find, in general, they're not so terrible," he said, adding, however, that there is some pricing pressure on large casualty risks.

He likened the situation to conditions that existed in 1988. "I thought I saw this terrible pricing pressure, and stopped writing new business and stopped growing," he said. Mr. Berkley described this as "the stupidest thing" he'd ever done.

Mr. Dowling said that while he also had concerns with broker surveys, "they are directionally correct" and in line with insurer surveys, showing the same downward direction in prices.

Even if rates are only down a couple of points, "what happens if we get loss costs going [up]?" he asked.

A high-80s combined ratio can get to breakeven "pretty quick with a few points of rate reduction and some underlying loss cost inflation," Mr. Dowling said.

"When I hear companies consistently say, 'we have room in the rates' and 'we are still meeting our hurdle rates'" to achieve our return goals, that means "rates are still quite good--not as good as they were--but that direction is not your friend."

Later, Ted Kelly, chairman of Boston-based Liberty Mutual, delivering the keynote address, listed his own set of concerns about the industry--among them the current level of capital and its potential impact on the market.

While there is some downward pressure on prices, surprisingly, it is "benign right now," competitive behavior is "not too bad," and market prices remain acceptable," Mr. Kelly said. "I am concerned, however, that...history will repeat itself."

"I have no reason to believe that the industry will be any better in this cycle than it was in the last cycle," he noted.

Mr. Kelly said the industry behaves "like an alcoholic that is cured until he passes the next bar." Excess capital "will undoubtedly trigger undisciplined pricing and unreasonable competition," he added.

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Market Price Slide Overstated, Says CEO Berkley

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