The large majority of corporate insurance buyers dont believe their firms have benefited from the fact that major brokers stopped accepting contingency fees following probes into bid-rigging and account steering by then New York attorney general (now governor) Eliot Spitzer and others, a National Underwriter survey revealed. With the mega-brokers having sworn off the now disgraced volume-based bonus commissions, where did all those billions go?

Fifty-six percent of the 132 risk managers surveyed believe the money saved by eliminating contingency commissions is being retained by insurers, compared to only 7 percent who say the savings are being passed on to them in the form of lower premiums.

More than one-in-three simply dont know where that bonus money went, according to NU's "State of the Market" survey, sponsored by Miller--an independent, specialist, wholesale insurance and reinsurance broker based in London, operating internationally as well as at Lloyd's.