Insurance news

• FHCF obtains discount on $1bn reinsurance renewal

  27-06-2017 22:24
  The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund (FHCF) has renewed its
  $1bn reinsurance programme largely unchanged from last year, in a
  late placement following the 1 June renewal.
  The $1bn cover was obtained for a premium of $61mn, down 4
  percent from the $63.5mn spend last year.
  The cover will trigger once losses have surpassed $11.5bn, at
  the same level as in 2016, although previously the board's
  trustees had considered lowering the attachment point on the
  treaty.
  The SBA calculated that the...
  
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• New City minister vows reform of insurance claims system

  27-06-2017 21:48
  Barclay promises revamp of ‘Ogden’ rate change that caused car premiums to leap
  
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• Regulators must coordinate on Brexit: ABI panellists

  27-06-2017 19:23
  European insurance regulators need to respect each other's
  oversight, at least for a transitional period, to prevent Brexit
  from jeopardising financial stability, panellists at an Association
  of British Insurers (ABI) conference said.
  At the Brexit event today, KPMG director Janine Hawes called for
  a "short-circuited, abbreviated process that relies on the
  work already done" by peer regulators when one insurer is
  seeking to establish a presence in another jurisdiction.
  Insurance Ireland CEO Kevi
  
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• Insurance-only trade deals a possibility post-Brexit: DIT

  27-06-2017 19:23
  Bilateral insurance sector agreements between the UK and partner
  countries could materialise before comprehensive trade deals,
  according to a senior civil servant at the Department for
  International Trade (DIT).
  At an Association of British Insurers (ABI) Brexit conference
  today, DIT director Rosa Wilkinson told delegates that following
  the Brexit referendum her department had increased the number of
  staff in place to discuss trade deals from 40 to 250.
  She said the DIT had 10 working groups loo
  
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• AIG names UK casualty and commercial property heads

  27-06-2017 19:23
  AIG has drawn on internal executives to appoint new heads of UK
  casualty and commercial property and to bolster its UK operating
  committee, The Insurance Insider
  understands.Hilary Browne becomes AIG's new head of UK casualty,
  replacing Stuart Sutherland, who left to becomehead of casualty at Liberty Specialty Markets in April.Rasmus Nygård has been promoted to the role of head of UK
  commercial property. Nygård will also head UK property
  underwriting at AIG subsidiary Lexington Insur
  
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• New cyber attack 'ten times' worse than WannaCry

  27-06-2017 18:02
  
  Insurers braced for cyber claims as estimates say new attack will cost ten times more than the WannaCry attack last month
  
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• Minister hints at Ogden rate change

  27-06-2017 18:00
  
  Treasury minister tells ABI that it may change the way the Ogden personal injury rate is set
  
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• Opinion: Biba's Steve White on tackling underinsurance

  27-06-2017 16:36
  
  Trials and tribulations of underinsurance: Tackling underinsurance isn’t being made any easier by the recent changes to the Ogden discount rate, explains Steve White
  
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• USI strikes deal to acquire Wells Fargo broker

  27-06-2017 16:16
  KKR-backed intermediary USI has agreed a deal to acquire Wells
  Fargo's insurance broking business for an undisclosed
  consideration, the Valhalla, New York-based broker announced
  today.
  USI beat off competition from Alliant and Hub to come out on top
  in the accelerated sales process.
  In a story in early June, The Insurance
  Insider named USI and Hub asthe two frontrunners to acquire the business.USI said that Wells Fargo Insurance Services USA includes its
  insurance brokerage and consulting busine
  
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• Texas underwriting results highlight auto woes

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Statutory data for the Texas personal auto market has provided
  strong evidence of the challenging conditions facing carriers in
  the space, which are also driving a number of reinsurers away from
  the business.Of the top 20 writers in the state across personal standard and
  non-standard auto, all but one experienced a deterioration in their
  loss ratio and combined ratio in 2016, according to analysis seen
  by The Insurance Insider.And of those carriers, four - State Farm County Mutual...
  
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• Swiss Re expands retro sidecar

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Swiss Re expanded its Sector Re sidecar to $492mn midway through
  2017 to increase its retro support from the vehicle by $100mn in
  the past year, sister publication Trading
  Risk revealed last week.
  The expansion translated as a 25 percent boost in capacity from
  the previous year's figure of $395mn.
  The reinsurer tends to source capital for the Sector Re vehicle
  in April and December, and has raised the $492mn from six different
  series of notes issued in the past...
  
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• (Re)insurers sue El Faro data provider for $49mn

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Several Lloyd's and US (re)insurers have launched a $49mn
  legal action against Norwegian weather data provider StormGeo
  alleging defective read-outs from its system contributed to the
  sinking of the El Faro in 2015, according to court documents.
  Lawyers for the (re)insurance companies, which include QBE,
  Great American and various Lloyd's carriers, argued that
  StormGeo's Bon Voyage 7 (BVS 7) software provided
  "outdated and erroneous" data on Hurricane Joaquin's
  path, into which the ship sailed a
  
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• Reinsurers fight to limit reductions to 5% in LatAm renewal

  27-06-2017 16:16
  The key 1 July renewal for the Latin American market is expected
  to go down to the wire in what one underwriter described as a
  "schizophrenic" market.
  Brokers are understood to have been pushing for rate reductions
  of up to 25 percent in some situations. However, early indications
  from underwriters surveyed by The Insurance Insider suggested
  average reductions for renewing treaty business were likely to be
  in the mid-single-digit range.
  Sources said the continued softening applied broadly across
  
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• Nephila doubles reinsurance line for Florida Citizens

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Nephila Capital led an expansion of collateralised reinsurance
  participation on the 2017 programme for Florida Citizens Property
  Insurance as it more than doubled its line to $286mn.
  This took total collateralised limit to above 40 percent of the
  $1.0bn programme, compared to a 24 percent share of last year's
  smaller $664.3mn limit.
  However, at that time Citizens also had $1.8bn of cat bond limit
  available to it on top of its traditional reinsurance, whereas this
  year itonly placed $300mn...
  
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• Motor reinsurers aim to double rates at 1 July

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Reinsurers are attempting to push through UK motor rate
  increases of as much as 100 percent at the 1 July renewals as they
  look to transform the pricing landscape following the swingeing
  reduction to the Ogden rate.
  The 1 July renewals mark the first major test of the impact of
  the -0.75 percent Ogden rate, which was announced in February and
  came into force on 20 March.
  EY earlier this month estimated the market impact of the cut at
  £3.5bn...
  
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• Leadenhall provides EV cover to Gryphon

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Amlin-owned insurance-linked securities (ILS) manager
  Leadenhall's support of InsurTech life insurance start-up
  Gryphon Group Holdings is connected to a reinsurance transaction,
  Trading Risk reported.
  Gryphon previously announced that it hadraised £180mn ($229.2mn) for its launch and cited
  Leadenhall and Punter Southall as investors behind the
  start-up.
  However, sources indicated that Leadenhall would provide
  embedded value (EV) cover for Gryphon, rather than putting up
  venture capital equ
  
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• Late cycle MGA gold rush continues with Long start-up

  27-06-2017 16:16
  The juggernaut of London market MGA formation is showing no
  signs of slowing with the news that Aspen Re's former London
  head Stefan Long isworking on a start-up in conjunction with Martin Reith's
  Neon.
  Interest in the MGA space has been intense in recent months as
  underwriters from corporate backgrounds look to reinvent themselves
  as entrepreneurs and a growing number of incubators vie for their
  signatures.
  MGA creation typically gathers pace in the latter stages of the
  soft cycle...
  
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• JLT signals intention to roll out SMB in London

  27-06-2017 16:16
  JLT Specialty, one of the biggest producers to the London
  market, has informed carriers that it intends to impose
  subscription market brokerage (SMB) on classes of business where
  placements are syndicated, The Insurance
  Insider has learned.
  In a fresh blow to underwriters already struggling with expense
  ratios that have topped 40 percent, JLT's specialty arm has
  said that having introduced SMB selectively over the last six to 12
  months it will now look to roll it out more generally.
  Broking...
  
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• Insider View: JLT Specialty's SMB drive

  27-06-2017 16:16
  The brokers have a cogent case for imposing subscription market
  brokerage (SMB), as JLT Specialty has indicated to insurers it will
  now do more broadly.
  It is more expensive for intermediaries to place business on a
  subscription basis. They have to undertake work that they don't
  have to do when they utilise insurers that write 100 percent of a
  risk.
  But that changes nothing from a carrier perspective. They are
  being asked to pay more by the brokers than they...
  
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• Illinois poised to create workers' comp fund

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Illinois, a state with $11bn in unpaid bills, may be on the
  verge of creating the first state-financed workers'
  compensation insurance system to be set up in decades.The Democrat-dominated Prairie State legislature has passed
  HB2622, which calls for $10mn in state funds to be used to
  establish the Illinois Employers Mutual Insurance Company.The money would come from funds used to operate the Illinois
  Workers' Compensation Commission, with the transaction
  structured as a loan.The proposal is desi
  
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• D&O market could face Barclays fraud claim

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Any insurance claim stemming from the fraud allegations faced by
  UK banking giant Barclays would probably fall to the London
  directors' and officers' (D&O) market, The
  Insurance Insider understands.Sources told this publication that even though a financial
  institutions (FI) crime policy would typically cover instances of
  fraud, the circumstances around this particular case meant the
  D&O market could pay out tens of millions of pounds.Barclays, its former chief executive John Varley and t
  
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• City minister hints at significant Ogden row-back

  27-06-2017 16:16
  UK City minister Stephen Barclay today gave insurers increased
  hope of a favourable change to the Ogden rate just months after it
  was slashed, after describing the existing mechanism as
  "outdated".
  Speaking at the Association of British Insurers conference
  today, Barclay thanked the industry for its responses to the
  ongoing consultation into how the personal injury discount rate
  should be set.
  Noting that the 2.5 percentage point cut to the rate introduced
  in March this year had "concerned" him,
  
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• Argentine reinsurance market reopens at 1.7

  27-06-2017 16:16
  Argentina's Superintendent of Insurance Juan Pazo has
  detailed plans to reopen his country's market to foreign-owned
  admitted reinsurers at the 1 July renewals.Speaking at an insurance event in London organised by the
  Argentine government yesterday, the superintendent hailed the
  reform as part of President Mauricio Macri's wider economic
  plan to "reinsert" Argentina into the global economy.Pazo explained that as from 1 July of this year 50 percent of
  reinsurance could be placed with foreign-owne
  
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• AIG and IBM provide blockchain cover for Standard Chartered

  27-06-2017 16:16
  AIG has piloted a multinational blockchain-based policy for
  Standard Chartered Bank in the first major use of the much-vaunted
  technology in the global (re)insurance industry.The policy, provided in conjunction with technology company IBM,
  was written from London and spanned three jurisdictions with
  differing regulatory requirements: the US, Kenya and Singapore.The three jurisdictions were chosen to test the technology's
  applicability across markets to gauge how blockchain can alleviate
  ineffici
  
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• Blog: Join ERS on the Gumball rally

  27-06-2017 16:05
  
  What will you be doing this Saturday? Pottering in the garden, playing with the kids, relaxing with friends?
  
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• Government should rethink stance on single market access: Scotland's Brexit Minister

  27-06-2017 15:02
  
  Theresa May’s government should rethink its stance on a hard Brexit and single market access, Scotland's Brexit minister has said.
  
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• Willis Towers Watson chief reveals merger wobbles

  27-06-2017 14:57
  John Haley says uniting insurance brokers proved a challenge but was right decision
  
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• Government to introduce ILS framework in the autumn

  27-06-2017 13:59
  
  The government is to introduce a framework for Insurance Linked Securities before parliament with the hope of getting it up and running in the autumn, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury has said.
  
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• Equivalence is not a substitute for mutual market access agreement: ABI

  27-06-2017 13:29
  
  Regulatory and Solvency II equivalence is not an adequate replacement for a proper agreement on mutual market drawn up by government, the industry has heard.
  
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• Suncorp strikes Tower takeover deal

  27-06-2017 13:02
  Suncorp subsidiary Vero has won the battle to take over New
  Zealand insurer Tower, seeing off competition from Canadian
  conglomerate Fairfax Financial.
  Tower said today it had entered into a scheme implementation
  agreement for Vero to acquire 100 percent of Tower's shares
  after the bidder increased its offer to NZ$1.40 a share.
  This represented a 77.2 percent premium to Tower's
  undisturbed closing share price on 8 February. The deal values
  Tower at roughly NZ$236.1mn ($172mn).
  Fairfax announced
  
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• Opinion: Israeli regulatory concerns

  27-06-2017 13:02
  Rarely does a (re)insurance industry event pass without the
  obligatory and occasionally tired reference to the problems
  produced by regulation.
  Frequently it is derided as the source of all business evils, a
  sort of inverse panacea which smothers the ability of markets to
  function "purely".
  But by and large the usual grumbling is benign. As much as the
  industry has its gripes with its many regulators, the watchmen
  rarely impede the path of legitimate transactions between bona
  fides businesses.
  S
  
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• Neon promotes Dougall to deputy active underwriter

  27-06-2017 13:02
  Specialty (re)insurer Neon has promoted head of casualty Andrew
  Dougall to the role of deputy active underwriter.Dougall joined Neon as head of Casualty in 2016 from Mitsui
  Sumitomo at Lloyd's, where he most recently served as head of
  property and casualty non-marine underwriting for Syndicate 3210.Also today, Neon said it has hired Annabel Fell-Clark as
  underwriting manager.
  Fell-Clark was formerly CEO of Axa ART, the French firm's
  specialist insurer of art and valuables, for seven years from
  2
  
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• Finch targets more than doubling revenue by 2020

  27-06-2017 12:25
  
  The broker is seeking organic and acquisition growth but according to Mike Latham there is no deal currently on the table.
  
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• InsurTech Futures: Apple makes cyber insurance move

  27-06-2017 11:40
  
  Reports say the technology firm has teamed up with Cisco to help businesses get a discount on cyber insurance.
  
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• Driver forced to leave home amid £39,000 quote in 'risky' Bradford

  27-06-2017 11:38
  
  Premium Content: Driver forced to leave home reveals problems with postcode insurance
  
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• Autofocus employees sentenced to over five years for fabricating evidence

  27-06-2017 11:18
  
  Seven former employees of Autofocus have been collectively sentenced to over five years after being found guilty of doctoring hire rate evidence to defend insurers in court.
  
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• Boss Tim Cook reveals Apple cyber insurance plan

  27-06-2017 10:45
  
  Apple cyber insurance plan will help cut costs for customers, vows boss Tim Cook
  
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• Watchstone names departing chief executive’s replacement

  27-06-2017 10:24
  
  Indro Mukerjee to depart Watchstone at end of year
  
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• Neon names Fell-Clark underwriting manager

  27-06-2017 10:15
  Specialty (re)insurer Neon has hired Annabel Fell-Clark as
  underwriting manager.
  In addition Neon former head of casualty Andrew Dougall has been
  promoted to deputy active underwriter as the carrier seeks to
  strengthen its broader underwriting management team.
  Fell-Clark was formerly CEO of Axa ART, the French firm's
  specialist insurer of art and valuables, for seven years from
  2007.
  At Axa she held responsibility for all UK, Asia, Scandinavia and
  International business via the London Market bro
  
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• Leaving the EU without a deal not acceptable, warns ABI

  27-06-2017 09:53
  
  Trade association says that if no Brexit deal is in place insurers may not be able to continue to meet the needs of millions customers and remain legally compliant.
  
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• No Brexit deal 'not acceptable' says ABI

  27-06-2017 09:43
  
  Leaving the European Union without a deal is not acceptable if insurers are to continue to meet the needs of customers and remain legally compliant, the Association of British Insurers, will warn today.
  
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• Fault in ADT burglar alarm left our rental property unprotected

  27-06-2017 08:00
  
  We discovered the alarm wasn’t working and have no idea how long it’s been out, but ADT isn’t acknowledging the problemWe have an ADT burglar alarm on our house in west London, but recently discovered it wasn’t working and have no idea how long it has been out. It’s a rental property and is between tenancies, so we rely on the alarm for security. Despite a number of phone calls and emails to ADT, the only explanation has come from a call handler who reluctantly told
  
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• ABI warns against a no-deal Brexit

  27-06-2017 07:10
  
  Huw Evans director general of the ABI warns against a no-deal Brexit at insurance conference
  
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• Blog: Brokers need to cross-sell more

  27-06-2017 07:00
  
  Brokers need to exploit cross-selling opportunities to protect their business, writes Nick Mohan, joint managing director at Jackson Lee Underwriting, pointing to gap insurance and other niche covers.
  
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• PCI calls on new Florida CFO to push AOB reform

  27-06-2017 03:26
  The Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) has
  called on Florida's new CFO Jimmy Patronis to help the drive
  for legislative reform to tackle the assignment of benefits (AOB)
  crisis in the state.
  Patronis was named yesterday to replace outgoing Jeff Atwater in
  the key position.
  Atwater had been an advocate of AOB reform, and PCI's
  regional manager for state government relations Logan McFaddin
  called on Patronis to pick up the mantle.
  "PCI and our members welcome newly appointed..
  
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• The Hartford offloads $1.6bn of pension liabilities on Pru

  27-06-2017 00:39
  US insurance giant The Hartford has offloaded almost a third of
  its pension liabilities on Prudential Financial.
  The deal will see Prudential take on $1.6bn of The
  Hartford's US qualified pension plan liabilities.
  As part of the agreement, Prudential will take responsibility
  for current and future pension benefits for around 16,000 of The
  Hartford's former employees.
  But The Hartford said the transaction would not affect the
  pension benefits that its former workers were entitled to.
  "We are plea
  
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• Starr makes Bessinger domestic insurance CUO

  27-06-2017 00:39
  Starr Companies has promoted Richard Bessinger to become chief
  underwriting officer of three of its domestic insurance entities,
  the Maurice "Hank" Greenberg-led firm said today.
  In the new role, Bessinger will be responsible for underwriting
  at Starr Indemnity & Liability Company, Starr Specialty
  Insurance Company and Starr Surplus Lines Insurance Company.
  Starr said Bessinger had led its underwriting product management
  and development since 2009....
  
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• Fidelity National picks up Hawaiian title insurer

  27-06-2017 00:39
  Fidelity National Financial has taken a majority stake in Title
  Guaranty of Hawaii, extending its reach in the US real estate
  market.
  Fidelity is already the country's largest provider of title
  insurance, which protects a policyholders' ownership stake in a
  property.
  Title Guaranty's website says it provides cover for
  "all real property transactions" including residential,
  commercial, resort, land and development.
  Fidelity will take a majority stake in the firm with the
  newly-acquired insurer's
  
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• Alliant the frontrunner for Wells Fargo unit: reports

  27-06-2017 00:39
  Alliant is the frontrunner in the process to buy Wells
  Fargo's insurance broking and consulting business, according to
  reports.
  Bloomberg reported this afternoon (26 June) that rival retailer
  USI Insurance Services also remains in the chase to secure the
  intermediary.
  The report added that the San Francisco-based bank could
  announce a sale of the unit within weeks.
  With Wells Fargo the seventh largest broker in the US at the end
  of 2015 based on revenue, a combination with Alliant, currently...
  
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