Search

For the first time in Bermuda's 30 years of limited self-rule, the opposition Progressive Labour Party is expected to win the island's upcoming Parliamentary elections, much to the chagrin of [...]

Bermuda's property and casualty insurance companies are planning to use their capital to diversify beyond that catastrophe-prone area of business. Shareholders are pressuring firms to pay profits before capital is depleted by dropping prices. Of the eight Bermuda reinsurers, some are considering aggressive investment strategies but most are planning diversification. Operations at Renaissance Reinsurance Co, Mid Ocean Reinsurance and Glencoe Insurance Ltd are examples., If pricing deteriorates further in 1997 as expected, pressure on the Bermuda reinsurance market to improve capital utilization could pick up, according to market experts. Craig Elkind, a director at [...]

The workers' compensation insurance market is expected to continue its consolidation trend in an increasingly competitive environment. While current profit levels are supposed to decrease, expansive reforms at the state level will keep the industry more profitable than in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A shift towards retaining risk and self insurance is also expected to continue.

Risk managers well know the difficulty of finding adequate pollution coverage in commercial general liability insurance coverage these days. Faced with staggering liabilities for exposures such as Superfund cleanups, insurers [...]

American International Group (AIG) and Cendant Corp have increased their efforts to capture American Bankers Insurance Group's ownership. AIG's offer for American Bankers Insurance Group is $2.2 bil or $47-a-share, while Cendant's offer is $2.7 bil or $58-a-share. Cendant and AIG have filed lawsuits and launched advertising campaigns against each other to win control of American Bankers Insurance Group., The battle over who will control American Bankers Insurance Group--insurance behemoth American International Group or neophyte Cendant Corp.--has begun in earnest, with the two challenging each other's tactics and reputation [...]

There is pending litigation over liability issues governing the diet drug, fen-phen, the name for the combination of fenfluramine, phentermine and dexflenfluramine. Insurance industry experts do not believe the industry will be overly exposed due to this litigation because of the financial well being of the pharmaceutical industry. There are also some questions about the links between fen-phen and heart valve damage., If a steady diet of claims from masstort litigation hasn't killed the insurance industry's appetite for trendy new liability business, maybe the latest one concerning the diet-drug sensation fen-phen will. [...]

Medical malpractice liability reform has moved forward slowly in several states of the US during 1997 but national reform has not moved forward at all because most observers do not believe there is anything wrong with the system. Major reforms during the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s was due to the number and severity of medical malpractice claims. Insurance companies left the field during these difficult times., While medical malpractice liability reform continued to inch forward in a few states in 1997 national reform remained elusive in large part because the system isn't really broken, according to [...]

Insurance agents can often find better coverage for their clients on the non-admitted market than on the admitted market, according to some industry members. However, the admitted market is more difficult to access. This situation indicates that there is a need for more flexibility in the surplus market, according to some insurance officials. However, others believe that brokers have more access than they think to the non-admitted market. For example, they do not have to accept quotes from the admitted market if it does not meet their clients' needs. This then qualifies them to look at the non-admitted market., State regulation of commercial insurance is often the butt of jokes and criticism about bureaucracy and inflexibility. Indeed, the current state of commercial lines regulation -- even in the 'unregulated' [...]

Workers' compensation fraud deterrence has been successful at the state and company level even though major efforts have only been used between 1992 and 1997. Workers' compensation fraud costs the industry $58.7 billion each year even though 32 states have adopted formal fraud fighting measures. Fraud laws cover not only employees but also doctors, lawyers and employers., Begun only about five years ago, programs to fight workers' compensation insurance fraud at both state and company levels have been highly successful, but more still needs to be done, [...]

Insurance companies have started to acquire asset management companies as a way to increase profits and to provide value-added services to customers. Switzerland-based Zurich Insurance Group has acquired USA-based Scudder, Stevens and Clark Inc. for over $2 billion. These acquisitions are better for reinsurance or broad-based insurance companies rather than narrowly-focused insurance companies. Property/casualty insurance company, CNA, sold its Continental Asset Management operation in 1995., Analysts see a possible trend in Swiss insurance giant Zurich Insurance Group's $2 billion-plus acquisition of Boston-based money manager Scudder, Stevens & Clark Inc., but at least one property-casualty insurer, [...]

Risk managers can help minimize the risk and impact of a shareholder lawsuit before a company makes an initial public offering. The most important factor is to register an adequate, informational statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Omitting information can prompt a lawsuit. Other steps that risk managers should take or help plan include the purchase directors and officers liability insurance and the hiring of good underwriters and attorneys., Securities-fraud litigation has become a troubling fact of life for publicly-held companies. Such suits can be time-consuming, expensive and damaging to a company's reputation. But experts say there are certain [...]

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is set to remove a model risk retention law from its list of standards required for accreditation of state insurance departments. The risk retention group model law will be moved to supplemental standards and only core standards would be required for accreditation. Vermont's accreditation was delayed in 1993 because the state legislature and insurance department refused to make their regulatory system conform to the model law., The NAIC is poised to eliminate a model risk retention act from its list of standards required for accreditation. The move, which could come this week at the National Association [...]

Analysts project a negative outlook for 1997 for the property and casualty (p-c) insurance business. Property and casualty insurance firms will continue to try to cut costs and consolidate because overcapacity and extreme competition are making it hard to gain revenue. Overexposure to catastrophe risks in homeowner's lines is a major problem for p-c insurers, who should increase capital gains and reserves. Matthew T. Coyle of Standard and Poor's rating service expects most p-c firms' ratings to go down or remain the same in 1997., As long as the economy continues to steam along, neither too hot nor too cold, 1997 promises to be a lot like 1996 for property-casualty insurers, according to industry observers. [...]

Top officials from New York's Department of Insurance have talked with executives from commercial rating agencies since early 1995 about the agencies' influence on insurance companies. The discussions started after officials from New York insurers complained about an anti-New York bias and a preference for large insurance companies at the solvency-rating agencies, which include Duff and Phelps Corp., Standard and Poor's Corp. and A.M. Best Company Inc. The rating companies plan to keep their operations the same., Does the emerging quasi-regulatory role being played by major commercial rating agencies threaten the prerogatives of state insurance regulators, and can the two sides of insurer oversight work together to [...]

Several innovative indexed solutions in the non-traditional reinsurance market have yet to be tested by a market-defining event and therefore continue to carry a low profile. Potential successful ventures include the Chicago Board of Trade's Catastrophe Futures index and former New Jersey Insurance Commissioner Samuel F. Fortunato's catastrophe risk exchange, Catex., A more than two-year hiatus from major catastrophe losses and a highly competitive traditional reinsurance market has apparently dulled interest in innovative indexed solutions to catastrophe risks, according to leading [...]

Reinsurers are denying an increasing number of insurance companies' claims, just as insurers fight claims made by policyholders. Most reinsurance contracts include arbitration clauses, but the number of disputed cases has risen. For example, in the suit by Kemper Reinsurance Co., General Reinsurance Corp. and Allstate Reinsurance Corp. against Electric Mutual Liability Ins. Co. (EMLICO), the reinsurers claim EMLICO wants to move to Bermuda to avoid US insolvency laws. Other cases between insurers and reinsurers are also described., Policyholders probably won't shed too many tears to learn that many insurers that tenaciously fight them on claims are facing some of the same tactics by their reinsurers. Eugene R. [...]

Self-insured employers are increasingly finding it beneficial to integrate their benefits and workers' compensation plans. According to Tillinghast/Towers Perrin's Ken Martino, the growing importance of absence management, which involves finding ways of getting employees back to work as quickly as possible following injuries, is one factor driving the integration trend., As insurers continue to puzzle over the difficulties of offering 24-hour coverage, a growing number of self-insured employers are integrating their worker's compensation, group health plans and other employee benefits [...]

Insurers who cover managed care workers' compensation provider networks are overcoming legal uncertainties to coordinate risk management problems with malpractice insurance. Such programs are open to medical malpractice suits and suits from improper referrals. Riscorp and other insurers are cutting risk of lawsuits by taking up to six months to check physicians' backgrounds by sending staff to investigate former employers' files and complaint histories., The adversarial and litigious nature of workers' compensation creates some cure-resistant risks for managed-care workers' comp. provider networks and the insurers who put them together. Indeed, medical malpractice suits and [...]

State courts continue to struggle with the interpretation of language excluding pollution coverage except for 'sudden and accidental' pollution in commercial general liability insurance policies. In 1993, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that strictly limiting pollution coverage was not in the public interest and that the insurance industry misrepresented the conditions of the exclusion. However, courts in West Virginia, Indiana, Washington and many other states have favored the strict interpretation of the exception. This issue is also known as regulatory estoppel., State high courts have largely rejected policyholder arguments for a strict public-policy interpretation of the language of the 'sudden and accidental' exception to the pollution exclusion in commercial general liability [...]

John C. Hodge, the new global chief information officer of XL Capital Ltd., says his biggest challenge is to make sure the Hamilton, Bermuda-based reinsurance behemoth's information technology strategy makes [...]

Bermuda companies say they are being edged out of the emerging Mexican reinsurance market because of an ill-conceived tax scheme meant to dissuade Mexican companies from forming captive insurers in [...]

The outcry against an alleged loophole in the U.S. tax code, which critics say favors Bermuda reinsurers that buy U.S. primary carriers and encourages U.S. companies to move offshore, isn't [...]

IRB Brazil Reinsurance Company is ending 60 years as Brazil's state-run monopoly reinsurer by selling the government's stake for at least 519.3 million Brazilian Real, or about $298.6 million. Company [...]

With the possible exception of Citigroup, financial services reform hasn't made a difference for anybody and perhaps won't until the players can figure out how to meld together strikingly different [...]

European municipal lender Dexia's $2.6 billion acquisition of Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd. is a terrific deal for FSA's shareholders and will significantly enhance the bond insurer's ability to compete [...]

With U.S. reinsurers posting a worse-than-expected combined ratio of 113.8 for year-end 1999, a volatile equity market kept investment income from offsetting inadequate pricing and big underwriting losses for most [...]

With the possible exception of Citigroup, financial services reform hasn't made a difference for anybody and perhaps won't until the players can figure out how to meld together strikingly different [...]

ACE Ltd. said its ACE INA unit has asked a California Superior Court to dismiss with prejudice a lawsuit filed by two of its competitors to undo the controversial restructuring [...]

The federal Financial Services Modernization Act and electronic commerce might shrink the number of insurers by 40 percent to 50 percent and cut the total U.S. financial services population by [...]

The federal Financial Services Modernization Act and electronic commerce might shrink the number of insurers by 40 percent to 50 percent and cut the total U.S. financial services population by [...]

After posting strong fourth-quarter operating earnings, ACE Ltd. in Hamilton, Bermuda is well positioned for a breakout year in 2000, according to the company's vice chairman, Donald Kramer. 'We've been [...]

A U.S. federal court dismissed a racketeering lawsuit against Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings Ltd. stemming from its involvement in the $2 billion blowup associated with the Unicover Managers workers' compensation [...]

Robert J. Cooney, chief executive officer of Maximus Capital Holdings Ltd., the parent of Bermuda-based reinsurance startup Max Re Ltd., thinks he knows a gem of a business strategy when [...]

The fourth quarter of 1999 is shaping up as one of the worst in recent memory for Bermuda insurers, largely because of a record $24 billion in property-catastrophe losses that [...]

Bermuda's new government, led by the Progressive Labour Party, gets mostly high marks for its handling of regulatory policy for the international insurance industry, but even so an announcement about [...]

American Re Corp. posted a net loss of $208.1 million for the fourth quarter of 1999, citing 'inadequate pricing' and heavier-than-usual catastrophe losses. The fourth-quarter net loss included $70.6 million [...]

Joseph V. Taranto, chairman and chief executive officer of Everest Reinsurance Holdings, is one of a growing number of AIG alumni who believe AIG Chairman Hank Greenberg's 'university' is 'a [...]

Liggett Group is suing 32 of its insurers in Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, seeking declaratory relief after the carriers refused to defend and indemnify the tobacco maker for its [...]

An attitudinal shift seems to have occurred in the U.S. reinsurance market, with a number of carriers taking a tough stand against perpetually falling prices during the January 2000 renewal [...]

Markel Corp. and Terra Nova (Bermuda) Holdings Ltd. said they are revising the terms of their more than $1 billion merger because of heavy Terra Nova losses attributed to catastrophe [...]

Unicover and a few other recent meltdowns of books of business generated by managing general agents are once again raising questions about the wisdom of doing business with MGAs. Meanwhile, [...]

'The long-hoped-for turn in the market has emerged,' according to one of the Bermuda insurance market's leading luminaries. Asked to characterize the turn he identified, Brian Duperreault, chairman, president and [...]

Giving in to pressure from shareholders over poor earnings and business decisions, Risk Capital Holdings has agreed to sell its reinsurance operations to a unit of White Mountains Insurance Group [...]

Maximus Capital Holdings Ltd., the Bermuda-based holding company of Max Re Ltd., a new Bermuda reinsurance startup, said it has raised about $331 million from a private equity offering. The [...]

Continuing its effort to focus on its core commercial insurance specialties, St. Paul Companies has sold its non-standard auto insurance business to Prudential Insurance Company of America for $200 million. [...]

Everest Reinsurance Holdings Inc. said its subsidiary, Everest Reinsurance Company, is restating its reserves and reducing the amount it was seeking as part of a settlement of a dispute over [...]

Robert P. Cochran, chairman and chief executive officer of Financial Security Assurance Holdings Ltd., doesn't worry about the growing number of dabblers in the financial guaranty insurance business. To be [...]

A lawsuit filed by two units of A American International Group, which seeks to make a rival stand by policies it tried to segregate in a runoff entity, is a [...]

The combination of substantial potential losses and the unsavory tinge of involvement in the Unicover Managers Inc. reinsurance pool will force a resolution in the Unicover lawsuits that will limit [...]

In a move that brings clear industry expertise to bear to support its diversification plans, Overseas Partners Ltd. of Hamilton, Bermuda, appointed Mary Hennessy as president and chief operating officer. [...]