Insurance-company executives, a global broker and analyst firms are weighing in on whether the market is hardening—and their responses include “yes,” “maybe,” and a debate over whether the traditional hard- and soft-market cycles are even relevant anymore in the marketplace.

W.R. Berkley CEO William R. Berkley stated at the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference in New York on Dec. 6 that the industry is now “definitively in a hardening market…We’re just at the beginning of price increases.”

Aside from prices hardening, Berkley said terms and conditions are changing, allowing business written to become more profitable.

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