Aspen Chief Says It’s Time to Get Back Underwriting Discipline

December 13, 2011

  • December 13, 2011 at 10:20 am
    ComradeAnon says:
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    So he’s saying that insurance company should act like… an insurance company!

    And people wonder why there are cycles.

  • December 13, 2011 at 11:11 am
    Bob C. says:
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    Time to move away from cash flow underwriting. Now??? What has Mr Vitale been doing the past 5 years?

  • December 13, 2011 at 2:50 pm
    Mr. Obvious says:
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    Mr. Vitale, two words, “no kidding”. Are you not running your company? Why did you allow it to happen in the first place?

  • December 13, 2011 at 4:59 pm
    I've never heard that before says:
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    At least not in the last year or so. Quite a few times since Nineteen Nevermind.

  • December 13, 2011 at 5:53 pm
    Agent says:
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    Losses are probably starting to hit Aspen’s financials. The company has a simple choice. You raise your prices and take the consequence of having less business. In short, you would rather write less business that is profitable than have more revenue that is unprofitable.

    We will see how losses are affecting other insurer’s financial statements before we know that the market is hardening. These companies will then follow Aspen’s lead.

    Currently, there is too much capacity and competition on most lines where pricing is soft. The exception would be business lines where the market is tightening such as-property risks with catastrophe exposures, worker’s compensation, aviation, and some lines of directors and officers.

  • December 14, 2011 at 5:59 am
    Veteran insider says:
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    While Mario was/is cash flow underwriting along with the rest of the insurance industry executives, was his board continuing to provide salary & bonus that was clearly unearned? Is he planning on returning any of it? How can you invest cash in this environment, when returns before inflation are near zero? Yet that is what our industry is doing.
    Our industry will not get the premium increases required because capacity will not be reduced enough. The large insurers, such as AIG are considered too big to fail. Their capacity should have been removed in the last financial meltdown, but they were bailed out by the Fed.



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