? More than 61 percent of D&O liability insurance renewals were either less expensive (16 percent lower on average) or flat compared to last year.

? More than 65 percent of renewals of domestic property insurance were priced lower (18 percent less on average) or flat.

? Fifty percent of all workers' comp renewals were priced higher (14 percent on average) and 43 percent were priced lower (an average of 13 percent), with the remaining renewals coming in at the same level.

"Clearly, when 100 risk managers go into the market and 50 come back with a significantly better priced deal than the one they had last year, that means we are starting to experience a turn in the market from the past several years of large price increases," said Daniel H. Kugler, RIMS vice president, membership.

Mr. Kugler said, "The continued decline in D&O prices affirms that even the highest flier in the past few years is now coming back to earth. We anticipate that the market will continue to soften at least through the end of the year."

Though the momentum toward a soft market continues to build, the study found, underwriters still achieved rate increases on a significant number of renewals.

Average premium prices for the quarter across the entire market declined only slightly or remained flat, creating a potentially false impression that the overall market was stagnating.

Average D&O premium prices, which had experienced the most dramatic growth in the heart of the recent hard market, were essentially flat in the quarter, the survey found.

Property and general liability posted rate decreases, with property at -1 percent, down for the third consecutive quarter, and general liability at -2 percent, in the negative column for the second quarter in a row.

Workers' comp was the only major line included in the survey that recorded a discernible increase on average, coming in at one percent higher, RIMS said. D&O and workers' comp had been experiencing significant double-digit increases as recently as last fall, but both have seen precipitous drop-offs in the rate of increase in the last few quarters.

"The bottom has not fallen out of the market, but this is a deliberate march to a soft market," noted David Bradford, editor-in-chief at New York-based Advisen, the information services firm.

Mr. Bradford said, "The mood at the carriers is more down than the average price numbers might suggest, but when you figure out that underwriters are losing decisively in half of all negotiations, then you begin to understand the real sense of the market."

Advisen, a provider of information, analytic and benchmarking tools for commercial insurance professionals, analyzes the survey results continuously, offering a dynamic and virtually real-time window into the current purchase patterns of commercial insurance buyers. The results represent data compiled from more than 1100 organizations to-date.