Intense competition among insurers, increased capacity, and fewer insured catastrophe losses all played key roles in keeping U.S. insurance markets generally stable in 2009—and are poised to do so again in 2010.

The combination helped stave off a widely expected market hardening in 2009, although some specific lines of coverage—D&O for financial institutions, for example—did experience premium rate increases.

Click any of the tabs above for some key takeaways from Marsh’s U.S. Insurance Market Report 2010.