hard market

plural hard markets

1. businessAn economic environment in which insurers raise their prices.

   Insurers are reluctant to pay out retained earnings during soft markets because of the difficulty of raising capital again when the market enters the next hard market phase, leading to excess capcaity and downward pressure on prices.

   2009, J. David Cummins, Olivier Mahul, “Appendix 8: Review of the Catastrophe Reinsurance Market”, in Catastrophe Risk Financing in Developing Countries: Principles for Public Intervention, The World Bank, →DOI, →ISBN, page 195

   2 more examples

   Property-liability insurance markets have been characterized historically by “soft” markets, in which prices are stable or falling and coverage is readily available, followed by “hard” markets, in which prices rise rapidly and availability declines.

   2000, Scott Harrington, Patricia Danzon, “The Economics of Liability Insurance”, in Georges Dionne, editor, Handbook of Insurance, Springer Science+Business Media, →DOI, →ISBN, page 296

   A possible explanation for this difference is that under the variations-from-bureau rates-without-prior-approval regime, the regulatory agency continues to hold rates down during a hard market but allows the insurer to increase rates relative to pure administered pricing during the soft phase of the cycle.

   2001, Terry Thomason; Timothy P. Schmidle; John F. Burton, Jr., chapter 7, in Workers’ Compensation: Benefits, Costs, and Safety under Alternative Insurance Arrangements, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, page 216