Although the term "stabilizing" has popped up in reports on insurance market conditions in the last two weeks, "unpredictable" was the more common word on the lips of E&S insurers and brokers heading into the NAPSLO annual meeting in San Diego.

At the meeting, which took place before Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast and before Hurricane AIG shook the financial markets, members of the National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices, Ltd. viewed competition and an economic slowdown as their biggest headaches for the year up to that point.

Phil Ballinger, executive director of the Surplus Lines Stamping Office of Texas, noted that U.S. businesses have been "more reticent to hire people, to invest in expansion, to construct new facilities, to build inventory."

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