Significant uncertainty remains over prices and conditions in the commercial insurance market following last year's record hurricane season, Lloyd's has warned.
The warning comes in a new report, Managing the Insurance Cycle, which has been published by the world's leading, specialist insurance market, this week.
Lloyd's recommends seven key steps for ensuring the industry becomes less unpredictable and underwrites on a sustainable basis for the benefit of both policyholders and insurers.
Refusing to 'follow the herd', providing the right incentives for underwriters, and investing in risk management tools are among key recommendations for managing the insurance cycle, in the report.
Rolf Tolle, Lloyd's director, franchise performance, said: "In the past, insurers have simply accepted the insurance cycle, seeing it as a force of nature with an uncontrollable impact on their business.
"We have already done a lot of work on this at Lloyd's to encourage underwriters to manage the cycle, but the real test of a soft market is still ahead of us and there remains much to be done."
Meanwhile, a separate report, also published this week, has said that UK non-life insurers, at this stage of the underwriting cycle face pricing pressure as the single greatest threat to their profitability in the next 12 months. The report was published by Fitch Ratings.
