Concepts of Insurance Cycles: The Evolution of Views from Classics to Modernity

The insurance (underwriting) cycle – the periodic alternation of ”soft” and ”hard” markets – has long remained outside the framework of systematic theory, although the practical consequences of cyclical behavior are obvious: from the profitability of insurers to regulatory strategies. The purpose of this article is to systematize the evolution of theoretical concepts of insurance cycles, highlighting the changing paradigms, their determinants, methodology and limitations. Based on an integrated methodological approach combining historical and analytical, systemic and comparative analysis, the article proposes a periodization of scientific paradigms explaining cycles: risk distribution (XIX – 1920s), market endogeneity (1950s –1980s), financial and institutional complexity (1990–2010) and hybrid system cycles (2011 – present). The novelty lies in the author’s periodization of insurance cycle paradigms. The rest of the results obtained – a systematization of modern drivers divided into direct and indirect indicators, a description of the regulator as an active participant in cycles, a description of the mechanism of shock imposition using the examples of COVID-19, cyberattacks of 2020–2023 and sanctions of 2022 for Russia – are analytical generalizations and do not claim to be independent novelty. It has been shown that after 2011, an incomplete recovery after one shock reinforces the next, putting the market in a mode of pulsating volatility.