Rethink - Electronic trading finally dawns in London.

(From Reinsurance)

August has arrived, and before we all vanish off on holidays to far-flung destinations, here is our monthly report on what is weighing on your mind at this time of year.

This month's Rethink poll was carried out in July, at a time when the Atlantic hurricane season was proving to be surprisingly quiet, and many of you were wondering if the lull in the weather was trying to lure underwriters into a false sense of security.

The first question we asked was if you thought that increasing property/catastrophe (P&C) capacity for 2007 was clever. The results here were not all that clear-cut: 40.9% said that it was; 50% disagreed; and 9.1% said that they didn't know. It should be interesting to see the results when we ask this question again further on this year, once the hurricane season has had a real chance to get going.

Next we asked you when you thought Lloyd's and the US regulators would finally get down to it and thrash out (at long last) an agreement over collateralisation. A brave 4.6% of you ventured to suggest that it would happen very soon; a more realistic 40.9% said that it would happen in the medium term; and a somewhat more pessimistic 31.8% of you pointed to the long term. The remaining 22.7% said, somewhat cynically, that pigs might fly first.

Staying in the sunny uplands of optimism, we next asked you if you thought that, following Aon's and Ri3k's lead, the dawn of electronic trading is finally upon us. A total of 63.6% said that yes, this was true; 22.7% disagreed, no doubt wondering if this was merely yet another one of those pesky false dawns that have been glowering on the horizon for years; and 13.7% said that they didn't know.

Moving on, the next question was asked in the aftermath of Larry Silverstein's latest announcement that he was suing someone else over the World Trade Centre. We asked you if the amount of litigation involved in reinsurance these days is stifling ...