By Tom Dyson in DailyWealth:

The key to banking is, you never lend money at an interest rate that's too low, even if it means you lose business to a more aggressive lender. It's the same in insurance. Never write insurance when it's not profitable, even if it means you lose the business. There's a saying in the insurance industry that makes the point: "Volume is for vanity, but profit is for sanity."

MarketScout tracks pricing trends in the insurance industry. In June, Richard Kerr, MarketScout's CEO, announced three publicly traded insurers were "clamoring for premium, seemingly at any rate." He called these insurers "the terrible trio," and said they were responsible for keeping insurance prices low across the whole industry.

Here's the thing: These acts of desperation by a few large players almost always mark the bottom of the insurance price cycle.

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