Despite being on the heels of the worst first quarter for catastrophes on record, Willis Group chairman and chief executive Joe Plumeri expects rates to be either flat or down when the June 1 reinsurance renewal season gets under way.

"There was about $16 billion in cat losses and nothing moved," Mr. Plumeri told BestWire. "There was no sense of precaution."

He said companies are still chasing down rates to gain market share, there is still a lot of cash on balance sheets and the market remains very soft.

That's not to say he isn't feeling cautious about what could materialise.

Mr. Plumeri, who was in Boston for the Risk and Insurance Management Society's annual meeting, said events that characteristically have a 100-year benchmark "happen to be happening all the time now." He said much of the damage from an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile didn't involve insured losses. And while the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland disrupted European air travel, there is a presumption that the grounding of flights will minimise the potential for hull and liability claims.

But Mr. Plumeri is anything but apathetic when it comes to the potential of future events.

"My concern is that if something happens where it's really an insured costly catastrophe, rates will spike dramatically and that's in nobody's best interest," Mr. Plumeri said.

"Events that happened every hundred years, they are happening every couple of weeks."

As 2010 catastrophe losses continue to mount, reinsurers in particular are feeling the brunt of the Chile earthquake.

The most significant first-quarter losses stem from the Chile earthquake, with estimates ranging as high as $8 billion to $10 billion.

Reinsurers are estimated to bear up to 90 percent of the losses in Chile, and the impact on the reinsurance industry is roughly the same as it would be for a $25 billion to $30 billion US cat loss, according to Willis Re.

Catastrophes aren't the only area of concern. "It's not a political comment, but I never thought that I'd hear a president talk about putting clamps on Wall Street," Mr. Plumeri said.