Arthur D. Little has measured operative expense ratios in 50 of Europe’s largest non-life insurers over a period of 36 months. As the immediate fallout from the credit crisis becomes evident, the insurance industry must shift its focus to more long-term financial sustainability. One way to view this is to measure cost efficiency. Having identified those providers with fundamentally low expense ratios, the report is able to predict which European insurers will be likely to perform reasonably well in the business down-turn and who appears to be more exposed. The new study reveals that Nordic insurance companies lead Europe in cost-efficiency, while their peers in central Europe lag behind.