In the below interview with Insurance Journal, Alan Jay Kaufman, chairman, president and CEO of wholesale broker Burns & Wilcox, says that he doesn’t expect to see any significant turn towards a hard insurance market — or even any real “firming” — until the economy turns around. (via Insurance Journal)

To Kaufman, the current state of the market is defined by the excess capacity in the industry and the meager growth of the economy. ”The capacity is certainly there to write business,” says Kaufman in the interview. ”If the economy does not grow, the rates will not go up. It’s fairly simple.”

Why? “The economy does have a major impact on the insurance market,” he says. “There is less business to insure in professional liability. [And] the professional areas are not expanding; they’re flat.”