Reinsurance

After a painful 2008, insurance companies have made a comeback, with plenty of cash on their balance sheets. As a result, mergers and acquisitions will likely dominate the insurance and reinsurance market in 2010.

The catastrophe bond market has fully recovered.

Insurers and reinsurers are still dancing around an agreement on next year's rates, but an insider expects reinsurance rates to fall 9 percent for the property-catastrophe sector.

The spike in banking litigation didn't come, protecting insurers and reinsurers from hefty claims. Look for pricing to stabilize, only a year after the crisis.

In an odd twist of logic, it's looking like a good year to be in the catastrophe business. The business of insuring against catastrophes, that is. Industry insiders now expect that catastrophe bond activity will pass the $3 billion mark for 2009, which didn't really seem possible just did six...