Conventional wisdom would say that the time to start a wholesale business is not in the middle of a soft market, when the demand for that business suffers.

No news is good news, so they say, and that applies in some ways to the current Florida E&S commercial property market.

With a Republican Senate win tipping the Congressional balance away from the Democrats (see "Legislative Roundup"), healthcare reform has officially been relegated to the back burner.

It will take guts for executives of excess and surplus lines carriers to get through 2010, especially those who head up publicly traded operations, experts said at an investment analysts' conference recently.