Moore Stephens says that current trends in the UK insurance industry point towards further consolidation and convergence in the underwriting and broking sectors over the next twelve months. In the latest issue of the Moore Stephens’ newsletter Insured Interest, Simon Gallagher, head of the firm’s Insurance Industry Group, says, “Consolidation has been a feature of the insurance industry for some years now, but there may be still some way to go. There are still a lot of potential buyers with large war-chests, willing to pay over and above what market intelligence might suggest is a realistic price. An underwriting period free of catastrophic losses, and a similar, concurrent period of healthy profits for insurers, has also increased the amount of capital in the market.