Mario Vitale, co-chief executive officer of Bermuda-based re/insurer Aspen, said insurers are facing a “new world order” in terms of catastrophe exposure.The world is getting riskier, Mr Vitale told AM Best’s News Service at the Risk and Insurance Management Society 2012 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, he sees pricing as firming, though a hard market has yet to arrive.Q: 2011 was a bad year for natural catastrophes. What lessons have you learned?A: Well, I think we learned a lot. I often talk about how the world is becoming riskier and we got to see that first hand in 2011. We remember everything that happened in Japan and the tsunami but not a lot of people remember all of the business interruption that continued beyond the losses that came as a result of that. Then again, we finished the year with Thailand. Very similar results. I think that no one really knew how much exposure they had there, how much of it was concentrated and what would be the business interruption from such large flooding losses. So I would say, the best and most important is the world is getting riskier, the models that we use we have to carefully examine and make sure they’re adequate to cover the new world order of exposure.Q: So turning to the economy, how has that impacted your business?A: Well, I believe at the moment, I’d say that it’s having both a positive and a negative impact. We’re seeing certain economies, like the US, that are starting to improve and what that means for our clients is increased sales, increased exposure bases, revenue, more cars driven, more payroll, etc. We’re also seeing in some parts of the world, particularly in Europe, where we’re seeing flattening or decreasing parts of the economy. And even in Asia or the Pacific where we see a great deal of manufacturing beginning it all hasn’t started to ship yet. We’re still seeing shipping down. So it has both positive and negative effects. Overall, I’m optimistic it’s going to be improving over the next couple of years.Q: Can we talk about insurance cycles? We used to have very distinct hard markets and soft markets. How would you describe what’s going on now?A: It’s a great question. I would say that I would describe it best as a firming market. It’s not a soft market, rates aren’t going down. It’s not a hard market in a sense that we’re not seeing the same drastic spikes that we’ve seen before. With this firming it’s moving in the right direction and it needs to firm. It needs to continue. Now, I believe it’s very possible it could easily slip into a hard market if there is a major catastrophe something that at the end of the day would have the kind of impact that Japan or Thailand had last year. Until that, it’s firming and I hope it continues in direction because it’s absolutely necessary.Useful website: View the interview with Vitale at: http://www.ambest.com/media/MA.asp?vid=vitale412