renewal season with signs that rates outside the US have fallen, according to company executives.

But they say have obtained a clear vote of confidence from major cedants, perhaps at the expense of smaller reinsurers.

Brokers say Bermuda was very responsive in a competitive property catastrophe market.

It was the competitive nature of the market, in fact, that has been blamed for the lateness of the season. Even by mid-January, some "cat'' reinsurers were still waiting for the actual signings, even though the programmes had basically been already agreed.

Cedants were able to shop freely and widely, leading to some sign downs, although the Bermuda companies said that they did not see this as a problem.

The world catastrophe market was being cut back during a period described by New York treaty reinsurance brokers, Wilcox Inc. as satisfying.

Wilcox president, Mr. Bob O'Leary, said,"From an intermediaries point of view, the 1995 renewals for the Bermuda companies went exceptionally well in terms of pricing and capacity.

"And the Bermuda market performed well and was utilised quite substantially, even though in some cases it was difficult to allocate everything that they would have wanted. But that was also true to the world market.'' There was a plethora of cases where catastrophe covers were over-placed, but early on, the fact that there was more capacity in the market this year than past years was commonly known by insurers.

That may have been important because in prior renewal seasons some companies would rush out early to the market to take the full limited amount of aggregate catastrophe capacity that the catastrophe market had available, at almost any price.

This year, clients had the luxury of slowing down, working on their structuring, analysing their requirements and spending more time reviewing their risks, presenting the best possible information to reinsurers to convince them that their risks were reduced or under control.

But there were companies too that were happy to wait to see how rates might soften. Some softening in price did occur for those cedants who remained unscathed from the California earthquake.

Still, Renaissance Re chairman, president and CEO, Mr. Jim Stanard, said the Bermuda market was able to show continued strength and advantages compared to its rivals.

"My guess would be the Bermuda market has grown in terms of both US and non-US premium,'' he said. "Bermuda probably has had better growth in the property catastrophe market than any other market in the world.'' He said that while there remained overcapacity for non-peak risks, such as non-US business, there was too, inadequate capacity for California and Florida because of earthquake and wind zones. In many cases, US programmes began to fill early.

Partner Re senior vice president and chief financial officer, Mr. Scott Moore, conceeded that the late season was more evident in Europe than the US.

The standard view among those at the helm in Bermuda's property catastrophe industry is that more so than ever before, the 1995 renewal season brought programmes priced on exposure.

Mr. James Bryce, senior vice president, underwriter for International Property Catastrophe Re said: "There was a bottle-neck of improved information in December flowing between reinsurer and insurer. Reinsurance is a very fluid business. The degree of sophistication in analysing the data has definitely increased.'' Mid Ocean Re president and CEO, Mr. Michael Butt, late last week said: "It is too early to be too definitive. Signings are not all in, yet. It would seem though, that the market has done reasonably well. Pricing was very much in line with what we expected.

"The Bermuda market undoubtedly confirmed its position as one of the two or three world centres for catastrophe reinsurance.'' Mr. Bryce said: "Everyone has a different posture in what's called the Bermuda market. Each company has a different technique and that is part of the uniqueness of this market.'' In discussing sign downs, Mr.Lawrence Doyle, president and CEO of Global Capital Re said, "Everybody expected to see sign downs, but certainly they are within the realm of expectation at this point. It varies from account to account. On the smaller accounts were there is significant capacity, sign downs are greater than they would be on the larger accounts. It's all supply and the demand.

"There's not going to be a lot of growth in the business in the coming year, because there are not any players dropping by the wayside and there really isn't significant growth in the underlying business.'' Mr. Doyle said: "Some rates came off, roughly ten percent overall.'' He said rate falls were partly offset by rate increases of 30-40 percent if companies had a California quake loss.

"The big national companies probably saw pricing going down five percent, little regional companies up to 20 percent. It all depends on the experience of the company.

"We saw more business this year then last year which is a very positive sign.

The quality of security here is first rate and far superior to that which exists elsewhere. These are nice clean companies that don't have to worry about the past.''