Life Industry Says London Bombings Show Need For TRIA Epansion

Although group life insurers are trying to control risk concentrations, "terrorism is and will remain an event that cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty, frequency or severity," Keating says.

The Financial Services Roundtable, Washington, another group that has been promoting the inclusion of group life in TRIA, is calling for Congress to move quickly to extend TRIA.

"Nothing is more illustrative of the importance of this than the events of today," says Andy Barbour, a vice president at the group.

As for group life reinsurers reducing concentrations of risk, "I don't know if we are fully there yet," says Erik Rasmussen, vice president of risk management with ING Re, Minneapolis, an arm of ING Groep N.V., Amsterdam.

"People are beginning to collect data and look at it," Rasmussen says. But, in many cases, the process of deciding which cases to take "is driven by what sales people are doing."

Moreover, to do an effective job of addressing risk concentrations, insurers have to look at data by street as well as by postal zone, Rasmussen says.

Assessing the risk of the kind of bombings that occurred in London would be especially difficult, because the risk was not focused on where employees worked but on how they got to work, says Rodney Clark, a director in the New York office of Standard & Poor's.