Empirical strikes back

A lot of one, one of the other.



Many journalists are running stories on the soft market and are using surveys as the base of their articles. There are two types of surveys data: anecdotal and empirical. There are a lot of anecdotal surveys while the RIMS Benchmark Survey produced by Advisen is the only one based on empirical data.



Today we announce the publication of the 2008 RIMS Benchmark Survey book which details the 2007 buying year for Risk Managers in North America (get your copy here). Just as our quarterly results showed, the soft market gained momentum across the board, including falling property rates for the first time since the 2005 hurricanes.



The annual book goes deeper than premiums and analyzes the total cost of risk (TCOR) including the retained losses and the expense of risk administration (salaries, etc.).



Anecdotal data comes from questions of brokers such as "do you think rates will continue to fall?" or "will they fall between 5 and 10%?" Instead, Advisen collects data right from risk managers on their buying of all commercial lines insurance coverages and with over 1,000 corporations reporting in 2007, the data set is the largest available.



While the overall picture is of a free-fall in premiums, this amount of benchmarking data enables comparison by industry, size of company, and other combinations to find any aberrations. For instance, changes in TCOR were not evenly distributed across industries and the book lists 14 industry groups for peer comparison.



Importantly, we also include the first installment of an annual survey about broker compensation. Risk managers provide a clear indication of how they compensate their brokers (general fee / placement commission); how much they compensate their brokers; broker market share by product; which services are currently included in their fees and which additional services risk managers would like to buy from their brokers.



It's an incredible benchmarking tool for corporate risk managers to demonstrate their relative sophistication in insuring their risk as well a road map for brokers to develop additional products and services for clients and prospects.



To buy your copy of the RIMS Benchmark Survey book including the full results of the broker survey click here. Discounts apply to RIMS members.