It’s profits week, so stay tuned for the half-year and annual results of most local insurance companies.

While analysts believe softening rates won’t have an effect on the insurers’ financial return in the short term, profits aren’t expected to be as impressive as they were for the past couple of years.

Lower premiums aren’t deterring the local leaders. QBE CEO Frank O’Halloran – who will report his company’s results tomorrow – is continuing to actively search for acquisitions both locally and overseas.

Mr O’Halloran has overseen 80 acquisitions in 38 countries during his career at QBE. Just last month he agreed to buy a US insurer, lifting the group’s annual premiums in North and South America to about $1.4 billion.

He and IAG CEO Michael Hawker – who reports his group’s results on Friday – are two of the three insurance industry leaders listed in the Australian Financial Review’s annual “25 True Leaders” honours. The third is Suncorp CEO John Mulcahy (who reports on August 26).

Mr Hawker has been on the list twice before. He was recognised for his corporate leadership, the relationships he forms and IAG’s “commitment to environmental and community issues”.

Mr O’Halloran made the list for his success in “operation as a true Australian on a global scale”.

Mr Mulcahy was recognised for sticking with Suncorp’s allfinanz model (although he doesn’t like to call it that) at a time when it has “been losing favour”, and continuing to “deliver on the synergies and more wide-ranging customer focus that rivals have failed to manage”.