Underwriting Cycle
Tendency of property and liability insurance premiums, insurers' profits, and availability of coverage to rise and fall with some regularity over time. A cycle can be said to begin when insurers tighten their underwriting standards and sharply raise premiums after a period of severe underwriting losses. Stricter standards and higher premium rates often bring dramatic increases in profits, attracting more capital to the insurance industry and raising underwriting capacity. On the other hand, as insurers strive to write more premiums at higher levels of profitability, premium rates may be driven down and underwriting standards relaxed in the competition for new business. Profits may erode and then turn into losses if more tax underwriting standards generate mounting claims. The stage would then be set for the cycle to begin again.
Popular Insurance Terms
Latin phrase meaning "without which not," signifying a legal rule in tort and negligence cases. Under this rule, a plaintiff trying to prove that an injury was a direct result of a ...
Same as term Commutation Right: right of a beneficiary of a life insurance policy to exchange the future installments due that beneficiary for a lump sum distribution. ...
Disability in which a wage earner is forever prevented from working because of injury or illness suffered. ...
Insurance company's adjusted surplus divided by its adjusted liabilities. The greater this ratio, the greater the financial strength of the company that can be used for writing new business ...
Legislation establishing the minimum education and experience level required by the state as a prerequisite for a person to become a licensed agent. ...
Events that do not have any influence on the occurrence or nonoccurrence of another event; for example, a plane crashing in Shreveport should have no influence on a plane crashing in Dallas. ...
Same as term Graduated Life Table: mortality table that reflects irregularities from age to age due to chance fluctuations in the sequence of the rates of mortality. The rates of death as ...
Fund that contains the portion of the premium that has been paid in advance for insurance that has not yet been provided. For example, if a business pays an annual premium of $1000 on ...
Table used in calculating minimum non forfeiture values and policy reserves for ordinary life insurance policies. These tables, which give minimum values that must be guaranteed to policy ...
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