Insurance prices may be dropping off but the ebb and flow of rates is not only nothing new, it is not likely to change.

This according to John Sinnott, a senior advisor for leading broker Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc., and former CEO and chairman of Marsh Inc.

Mr. Sinnott, who gave the keynote address at the opening of two days of industry sessions at the World Insurance Forum which runs through today at the Fairmont Southampton Hotel, said business had changed "immensely" since he started with the company in 1963 but predicted the pricing ups and downs witnessed through the years, would continue.

Mr. Sinnott said there had been predictions made any number of times through the years that the cyclical nature of underwriting would go away, but that that had never panned out.

Mr. Sinnott shared a chart with the audience that showed how the business had gone through the ups and downs of cycles ? a graph borrowed from an actuary that chronicled market peaks and valleys since 1956, and tracking pricing on an adequacy scale, showing levels falling as much as 20 percent below adequate through the years. And pencilled in after a pricing peak in 2002, was Mr. Sinnott's penned in 2003 followed by and a downward arrow.

His views that prices are now on the decline was backed up by leading brokers participating in a panel discussion that followed Mr. Sinnott's remarks, with Mario Vitale and Peter Garvey, executives with the North American operations of Willis and Marsh respectively, saying that in general all prices were coming down, even along casualty lines, including with directors' and officers' (D&O) liability, where the expectation was for rates to hold firm given the escalating level of court settlements. They added that the stiffest drops were being seen, which went against logic, for coverage for excess layers.

Mr. Sinnott said the decline now being seen followed the cyclical nature of insurance and predicted there would continue to be a rise and fall as "risk is dynamic, it is not static".

Looking back on his more than 40 years in the business, he said much had happened and it was on this basis that he held to the view that risk management pricing would continue to ebb and flow.

As an example of the shifts the industry have had to make through the years, Mr. Sinnott pointed to the increased need for terror cover after the terrorist attacks in the US in September, 2001, as well as the changes that the industry had seen in the last 20 years with the drastic changes in the US tort environment.

"The bottom line is that cycles are something we are going to have to manage our way through," he said.

He added that although many of the issues were ones specific to the US insurance sector, they impacted insurers around the world.