While the property and casualty insurance industry is seeing signs of returning fiscal health, policyholders should monitor the financial stability of insures in their portfolio, executives advised.

What can finance chiefs learn from airline pilots, wildfire fighters and infectious disease controllers? Valuable lessons on how to prevent disaster in the financial services industry have come from unlikely sources.

Harleysville Group Inc. said it expects recent estimated catastrophe losses to reduce 2010 first quarter operating income by $0.49 per share after taxes and impact the statutory combined ratio by 10 points.

Now in its seventh year, the soft market shows few signs of loosening its grip on commercial insurance pricing, according to the RIMS Benchmark Survey.