Citi analyst Joshua Shanker said reinsurers might get rate increases of as much as 10 percent for 1/1 renewals.

Shankar cited the following factors:

* investment losses,
* large storms,
* accumulated casualty loss trends and
* financial difficulties faced by several of the industry’s largest commercial insurers and reinsurers

as explaining the position, to which I would also add the almost complete drop-off in alternate risk transfer products following the financial rout of recent months.

Perhaps this sort of reporting will do something to stabilise the mad swings we’ve been seeing of late in the share prices of even well-run carriers.

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