Welcome to our annual Review & Outlook issue, which gives us a chance to look at the events of the past year and try and prognosticate on what lies ahead in 2012, based on feedback from agents and brokers, insurers, wholesalers, associations, consultants and young insurance professionals.

Of course, prognostication has its drawbacks. Based on last year’s input, we anticipated a slow and steady economic recovery, the end of the soft property-casualty insurance market, and better times ahead. Instead, we got a deluge of unprecedented natural disasters, more political gridlock, the near collapse of the European economic market, and yet another year of a soft pricing market.

In light of the current roller-coaster ride going on in Congress, on Wall Street, in the international markets and in the insurance business, predictions are hard to come by this year, even solely for the world of insurance. There is much uncertainty around legislative issues like NFIP modernization, healthcare reform, Dodd-Frank implementation, and more. And although property-casualty pricing may be firming, we’re still flush with capacity and investment income is still poor, which points to more uncertainty on when or whether the market will harden anytime soon.