Latest Market Headlines
All the headlines from our Market Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Re/insurance Market Conditions Will Lead to More M&A Activity: A.M. Best
Jul 20 2015 // Merger and takeover activity is likely to continue in the coming months as re/insurers increasingly seek ways to deploy capital and create scale against a backdrop of ongoing soft market conditions and weak investment...
Midwest – People
Jul 20 2015 // Church Mutual Insurance Co., based in Merrill, Wis., added Laura J. Hughes as chief marketing officer. She has more than 20 years of experience and an emphasis on the financial services industry. Prior to joining Church...
Near National P/C Carriers Identified for 2015
Jul 20 2015 // The Demotech Company Classification System, established in the Feb. 12, 2007 issue of Insurance Journal, categorizes insurers into one of 11 categories based on an analysis of data reported by the companies to the National...
How the Insurance Industry Is Using Google Glass
Jul 20 2015 // Improved customer service may be just one benefit insurers could see by using Google Glass in their operations. Michael Clifton, vice president of Insurance for Cognizant, described some of the benefits in the...
Report Sees Major Food Shortage as Climate Change Danger
Jul 16 2015 // Climate change reports and studies abound lately – as you will note from a previous column – but one recent report gives potentially the starkest prediction yet of what impacts climate change could have. The report...
Allianz: Hedge Funds Are Opportunity for Insurance Industry, Not Threat
Jul 16 2015 // Chris Fischer Hirs, the head of Allianz SE’s specialty insurance business, said he welcomes the growing participation of Wall Street in the insurance industry as an opportunity, not a threat. “Hedge funds bring...
Poll: Is ACE-Chubb Deal Good or Bad?
Jul 15 2015 // The insurance industry believes that on the whole, the ACE Ltd. acquisition of Chubb Corp. is a good deal. Industry professionals see the deal as perhaps better for the parties involved than for the property/casualty...
Xuber’s Bermuda Roundtable White Paper Summarizes Executives’ View of M&A
Jul 15 2015 // Xuber, Xchanging’s insurance software business, has gathered a report, which reveals that “insurance executives in Bermuda are questioning the long-term benefits of the current spate of mergers and acquisitions...
UK Insurers Ponder Implications of Premium Tax Increase
Jul 14 2015 // The unexpected announcement in UK Chancellor George Osborn’s budget, which would raise the Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) from 6 percent to 9.5 percent starting in November, poses a problem for UK-based insurers. David...
Exposing Insurance Frauds Saves UK Customers $5.588 Million a Day: ABI Study
Jul 13 2015 // The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has published figures showing that £3.6 million [$5.588 Million] a day is being “saved by exposing insurance cheats.” It is only one of the “factors helping to...
Rincón to Head New W. R. Berkley Subsidiary-Berkley Int’l Seguros Colombia
Jul 8 2015 // W. R. Berkley Corporation announced the formation of Berkley International Seguros Colombia S.A., which it said would “provide a full range of commercial insurance products, including construction all risk, surety,...
P/C Direct Premium Written Up Nearly 4 Percent
Jul 6 2015 // Direct premium written (DPW) for property/casualty insurance companies continues to increase, albeit gradually. At year-end 2014, more than $570 billion of DPW was reported, a record-high for the industry. For 2014, total...
Plugging the Hole in the U.S. Flood Market: How Risk Modelers Can Help to De-Risk the NFIP
Jul 6 2015 // The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has long been the dominant player in the U.S. flood insurance market, providing subsidized flood insurance based on actuarially unsound rates for millions of property owners, in...
Illinois’ Harper College, Zurich Team Up for Insurance Apprenticeship Program
Jul 6 2015 // A Chicago-area community college and a global insurance company are creating what they believe is the first-of-its-kind insurance apprenticeship program in the United States and one they hope will become an industry...
Reinsurance Industry Faces Uncertain Future as Time Moves On
Jul 2 2015 // It’s around two months until the annual Reinsurance Rendezvous in Monte Carlo, where the reinsurers, brokers, carriers, lawyers, accountants and cat modelers discuss the state of their industry. That industry, until...
Lighthouse Enters Texas Homeowners Insurance Market
Jul 2 2015 // Lighthouse Property Insurance Corp. (Lighthouse), with headquarters in Florida, began offering homeowners insurance and flood insurance throughout Texas on July 1. Lighthouse also provides coverage to more than 36,000...
ILS Products Are Changing Reinsurance Industry Norms: ‘Acts of God’ Author
Jul 1 2015 // Second of two articles In the first article in this series, Paula Jarzabkowski, professor of Strategic Management at Cass Business School, City University London, discussed the findings of her book on the reinsurance...
World Economic Forum Sees Finance/Insurance Industry in Digital Firing-Line
Jul 1 2015 // The world’s top banks and insurers are being forced to review their business models amid rapid inroads by nimble “fintech” start-ups, which are reshaping what consumers and businesses expect out of...
Reinsurance Market’s Evolution Could Affect Its Stability: ‘Acts of God’ Author
Jun 26 2015 // First of Two Articles The reinsurance market is moving from coverage of acts of God to one that covers commoditized risks – an evolution that could have long-term implications for market stability and trading large-scale...
CAMICO Wins IMCA Marketing Award; Allstate, Hartford, Jackson Also Honored
Jun 25 2015 // CAMICO won the SAMMY Award for overall Best of Show in insurance industry marketing and communications at the annual Insurance Marketing and Communications Association (IMCA) Showcase Awards gala this week in...
