“Over the past few months, people offering a positive spin on the reinsurers have had about as much chance of being heard as a political aide to a freshman Congressman visiting the set of Cross Fire,” Mr. Wilt wrote.

The sudden demotion of catastrophe models as underwriting tools in favor of the monitoring of aggregate exposures will be looked upon favorably by the rating agencies, he said.

Another factor pushing demand up is the trend for primary companies that are attempting to trim catastrophe exposures with higher level purchases while retaining lower level risk. For example, some retentions are moving from about $250 million to $500 million, and from $500 million to $700 million. “We think these are significant shifts,” he wrote.

Although coverage may be available at those levels, the prices offered by reinsurers will force the decision of the primary companies to retain more at the bottom and buy higher limits at the top layers of the programs, he wrote.

And don't look for all the new post-Katrina capital flowing into Bermuda to put much of a pinch on pricing, as it is mainly “filling gaps in programs and not creating excessive competition or causing the disruption some had feared,” Mr. Wilt wrote.