Mr. Fabel spoke as a panelist at a seminar titled "The Harsh Reality: A Post 9-11 State of the Industry"

Even though he is employed by an insurer, Mr. Fabel said that, "I have the same problems [with coverage] that everyone else has," including questions from upper management about rate hikes.

He said that like risk managers everywhere, it's also difficult for him to accept current market conditions.

"I have no losses, so therefore why am I being asked to shoulder the burden of a 200 percent rate increase?" he asked. "Some things make absolutely no sense but I think this is a great opportunity for risk managers to shine."

For "all too long" in the soft market, "it just came easy to us," he said. "Now we have to work with our own management to budget for these things," and to get a better feel for the underlying risks.

In the past, he said, there were issues and coverages that risk managers didn't have to focus on. Now, "we're really becoming more expert on what are truly the active and passive risks that we have," he said.

When he is hit with a 200 percent rate increase, he explained, "I already know in the back of my mind that maybe some of these things I can self-insure for and I don't really need this."

Back when costs were lower, he continued, it might have been a good price. "But at this point it's a very dear price and there's nothing as expensive as insurance that I don't need."

Brian Merkley, consultant, Tillinghast-Towers Perrin in Dallas gave his company's assessment of how bad the effects of Sept. 11 were.

A summary of Tillinghast's analysis of the overall impact on industry annual claims across various lines of insurance, he said, revealed that more than 20,000 claims have been paid since Sept. 11, totaling about $10 billion.

He said the company projects ultimate losses "between $30 billion and $58 billion. For both primary insurers and reinsurers, 9-11 was likely to be larger than the two previous catastrophes combined."

Those catastrophes were, he said, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which totaled $20 billion in losses, and the Northridge earthquake in 1994, which totaled $16 billion. "This looks to be close to both of those combined," he said.

In examining the various lines affected, he said that workers' compensation and liability are "relatively stable." Yet aviation is very volatile, "depending on the number of crashes each year."

Aviation was greatly affected by 9-11, he said, as was commercial property and business insurance, "where we saw a 75 percent increase in the annual claims in that line."