Property and casualty insurers have performed better during 2010, but premium growth will remain a challenge this year, according to speakers at an Insurance Information Institute seminar in New York.

Vincent Dowling, MD of research company Dowling & Partners, says premium growth for the sector last year presented differing viewpoints.

“On one hand, the industry didn’t grow its premiums and continues to have single digit operating return on equity,” he said.

“There is too much supply and demand was impacted negatively by the economy so the results were not terrific.

“But then if you look at the publicly traded companies, they actually did pretty well.”

McKinsey & Company Insurance Practice Leader Leo Grepin says the US industry’s financial results last year weren’t as bad as 2009’s.

“The industry managed to remain fairly stable and to do so in light of extreme difficulties,” he said.

“If you look at what was thrown at the industry in 2010, short of a major hurricane landing on the US we pretty much got everything we could.”

Mr Grepin cites these factors impacting on the US insurance industry as storms, healthcare and financial reform, softening markets and a slow economic recovery.