Two steps forward, one step back: For every couple of events that augured a definitive swing to a hard market this year—a major catastrophe here, increasing combined ratios there—some other factor contributed to helping keep prices soft, whether it was fear over the eurozone debt crisis or underwriters willing to heavily discount new business.

But while the pace of change has been staggered and unsteady—and is still by no means universal across all lines—there is little doubt that the market has undergone a significant transition in 2011.

In January, market conditions could be summed up as mostly soft, with pockets of flattening prices. By September/October, the consensus was the overall market had finally hit bottom. And by November, the pricing picture could be described as upward bound, if barely so, for the first time in eons—or at least since 2005.

In the pages of NU and on our PropertyCasualty360.com Web site, we wrote this year literally hundreds of articles—daily, sometimes hourly—on the soft/flat/(maybe) hardening market, as analysts, CEOs, the occasional soothsayer and others offered their assessments of the current state of the market and gave their predictions about when (or if) the market would turn, and what would cause it.

But perhaps nothing better conveys what happened on the pricing front in 2011 than the MarketScout pricing barometers we publish each month. As they show, it wasn’t a swift shift—but climb prices did, from an average decrease of 5 percent last December to the latest report: a 1 percent gain in November.

Special Reports /

#2 The P&C Pricing Picture: Rates Edge Up in Year of Staggered, Unsteady Transition

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