Soft talk

This time it’ll be different. There is a new crop of executives running the show and they won’t fall into the trap of the cycles. They won’t go chasing market share by lowering premiums.

They’re smarter, more experienced and, gosh darn, people like them.

Now for the news flash: Commercial insurance premiums continued to decline during the second quarter of 2007.

Maybe the executives are smarter but they appear to be acting like their predecessors, who, by the way, were no dummies.

According to the RIMS Benchmark Survey of current policy renewal prices as reported by corporate risk managers, second quarter reports show that directors and officers liability (D&O) continued to drop, falling an average of 7.29 percent since last year.

Workers’ compensation also continued its steady downward slide, though at a lesser pace, to 1.82 percent as compared to -3.8 percent in the first quarter. The slower pace of premium erosion in workers’ compensation may be due to reform measures in large states such as California and Florida having now worked their way through the system, according to an Advisen analysis.

General liability premiums continued a downward trend with a decrease of 1.16 percent.

Reports from the RIMS Benchmark Survey also show that property insurance exhibited no change, despite rate decreases reported by 70 percent of survey respondents during the second quarter.

“Premiums have been falling in most lines since the end of 2003, and the soft market shows no signs of letting up,” says David Bradford, editor-in-chief of Advisen.

Ahh, but Bradford thinks he sees a silver lining:

“[H]urricane season is now underway, and forecasters predict it will be a much worse than average year. Severe catastrophe losses could not only send property premiums shooting higher, but could also cause the overall soft market to come to a halt.”

So it really does all depend on which way the wind is blowing.