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“Blood in the street” before a turn in the cycle

09 July 2010

Panellists at S&P’s annual UK Insurance Symposium were particularly gloomy about the prospects of a turn in the underwriting cycle.

Read more: S&P Tom Bolt Stephen Catlin

Tom Bolt, director of underwriting performance at Lloyd’s of London, has a gory assessment of whether the market can expect a turn in the cycle any time soon.“CEOs won’t move prices until they see blood in the street and have the concern that some of it might be theirs,” Bolt told the audience at Standard & Poor’s UK Insurance Symposium in June.While the walls of Lime Street do not yet resemble scenes from a Wes Craven horror, based on the performance of the July 1 reinsurance renewals, it appears that underwriters have not lost enough blood. According to renewal reports released by the three largest reinsurance brokers – Willis Re, Aon Benfield and Guy Carpenter – reinsurance rates continued to erode at the July 1 2010 reinsurance renewal despite severe catastrophe losses during the first half of 2010.Catastrophic losses in the first six months of the year, which included the...


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For more catastrophe reports, data and news, click through to the RMS/Reactions Catastrophe Centre.

Poll

Catastrophe bond issuance was $4.3bn in 2011. How much new issuance will there be in 2012?

Less than $3bn
0%
$3bn-$4bn
67%
$4bn-$5bn
0%
$5bn-$6bn
33%
$6bn-$7bn
0%
More than $7bn
0%

Quote

If last year was the year of the cat, then this year could be the year of the debt crisis.

Mike Van Slooten, head of international market analysis at Aon Benfield