"I think it's more important to focus on activities that will help us to succeed regardless of whether it's a soft market or a hard market," he said.

Giving a broker's perspective, Matt Nichols, president of All Risks, Ltd. in Hunt Valley, Md., said, "We're hoping that our clients simply stay in business and we're able to get to write their insurance at a lesser rate and at a lesser size."

The current market "is certainly a different market than I think any of us has ever experienced--with the combination of rate and payroll decreases based on what's going on with the economy, as well as the shrinking of the average rate charged."

"Handling just one side or another side of that would have been enough--plenty of challenge. Both of them together have been a double-whammy for everyone," he said.

As for his firm's forecast, he said, "Our assessment is pretty simple. The market won't turn in 2010."

"We don't actually believe we're going to get much in the uptick of payroll and receipts," Mr. Nichols said, referring to the exposure bases used to determine premiums for individual insureds. The insured customers that retailers ultimately deal with "are going to be a little tighter in what they project in the future" in terms of business growth, he predicted.

"Everyone was high-flying two, three and four years ago," he said, noting that insureds were consistently projecting that sales receipts would rise 5, 10 and 20 percent per year.

"Year after year after year, they had done that and I think their expectation was that it was going to continue. [But now] people are a little less cavalier about that, and really focused on making sure that they maybe stay level with where they were," he said.

With construction business particularly challenged, he said, E&S customers are having a tough time staying in business, making the likelihood of paying higher insurance prices an even dimmer prospect.

Alan Jay Kaufman, chairman, president and CEO of Burns & Wilcox in Farmington Hills, Mich., advanced an economic supply-and-demand argument to support another negative assessment of the prospect of a near-term reversal of downward pricing trends.

A decrease in demand for insurance "will drag on into 2010 as the economy slowly works its way out of the recession," he said. "The supply side of the curve is way out of balance--there's even more capital in the business than there was pre-meltdown," he said. "These two factors combine to keep significant downward pressure on rates into the foreseeable future."

"Even the sectors that have shown the most discipline during the last two years--London and the reinsurers--are showing signs of needing to follow the market down in order to maintain adequate revenue streams," Mr. Kaufman asserted.

When capacity is withdrawn and the economic conditions improve, the market will turn--slowly, predicted David Price, executive vice president and chief underwriting officer of Burns & Wilcox, agreeing with Mr. Kaufman that the soft market will continue in 2010.

"The prediction we have internally is that we believe this market is likely to stay for another several years," said Mr. Nichols at All Risks. "Whether that's 2012 or 2014, we could all guess--and at some point we'll be right," he said. "It's no different than saying the stock market bubble was going to burst in 2000. It's the same type of mindset."

"We can't control it, so we've got to worry about the things we can impact and try to continue to grow our business regardless of market conditions."