Who Might The 'Terrible Trio' Be?

Richard Kerr, CEO of MarketScout, is a shameless tease! In commenting on his firm's latest Market Barometer survey, he asserted “there are still three large, admitted, publicly-traded insurers clamoring for premium, seemingly at any rate and continuing to prolong the soft market.” But he refuses to name the three stooges! Can you guess who they might be?

You've got to figure that one of the three is AIG (or AIU, or whatever it is they decide to call themselves), although the company is vehemently denying they are quoting deep discounts or selling more coverage for the same price to compensate for the damage to their reputation done by their corporate parent's reckless trading of credit default swaps and subsequent federal bailout.

But who else could Mr. Kerr be talking about, and why won't he just come out and name the three keeping prices soft despite the fact that “every sensible economic indicator tells us rates should be increasing…”?

“In our new financial world, the CEOs of the terrible trio are ultimately going to have some explaining to do,” he warned, while steadfastly refusing NU's requests to identify the carriers.

He added that “historically, the end of the soft market is punctuated with last-gasp deep rate reductions by a few desperate insurers, signaling either the end of the soft market or the end of an irresponsible insurer. Either way, once these irresponsible underwriters are reined in, we should be on the way to rate increases. Until that occurs, the soft market will continue.”

“We project the turn will come by year-end because all but the terrible trio are making appropriate underwriting decisions,” according to Mr. Kerr. “Even the E&S market is refusing to chase rates down, sitting on the sideline as the terrible trio slash each other to bits. Our guess is prudent insurers are waiting to pick up the fallout when the terrible trio have their day of reckoning.”

Which three stooges do you think Mr. Kerr is talking about? And please, Mr. Kerr, come clean with the identity of your “terrible trio.” The suspense is killing us!!!