History
The insurance cycle is a phenomenon that been recognised since at least the 1920s. Since then it has been considered an insurance 'fact of life'. Most commentators believe that underwriting cycles are inevitable, primarily "because the uncertainty inherent in matching insurance prices to losses creates an environment in which the motivations, ambitions, and fears of a complex cast of characters can play out." Lloyd's counters that this has become “a self-fulfilling prophecy”.
More recently, insurers have attempted to model the cycle and base their policy pricing and risk exposure accordingly.
Read more about this topic: Insurance Cycle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)