Rates to soften in 2007, says O'Kane

Aspen group chief executive Chris O'Kane, commented today on Aspen's initial outlook for 2007.

He said: “While we expect market conditions to remain generally attractive in 2007 we anticipate that rates will decline in certain of our product lines. We therefore expect gross written premiums to be approximately $1.9bn plus or minus 5%.”

“We expect the reduction in our retrocessional expense and a number of other changes in our underwriting portfolio to result in an improvement in our net underwriting margins. We currently expect that our combined ratio will be in the range of 83% to 88% assuming no major losses or prior year reserve movements.”