The most substantive of the three is Senate Bill 10017, filed by Senator Bailey on April 22. It targets Section 4228 of the Insurance Law, the provision that sets the rules for how life insurance and annuity companies pay their agents and brokers. Under the current law, the superintendent is required to periodically adjust the caps on training allowance subsidies, but the statute does not fix a specific schedule. The bill would replace that open-ended timeline with a mandatory annual adjustment on January 1 of each year, increasing the prior year’s limits by the same percentage as the state’s minimum wage adjustment…
Author: Awais
The dispute traces back to a volcanic eruption that damaged properties on the island of Hawai’i. Michael W. Hale, along with Gregory C. Dencker, Carol K. Dencker, and Champagne Cove, LLC, filed insurance claims and eventually sued a long list of defendants, including Lloyd’s, several of its syndicates, and a handful of insurance intermediaries such as Borisoff Insurance Services (doing business as Monarch E&S Insurance Services), Arms Claims Incorporated (doing business as Affirmative Risk Management), Pyramid Insurance Centre, and others. The three cases were consolidated in the Circuit Court of the Third Circuit under Judge Henry T. Nakamoto.
Several months later, Stewart filed a class-action complaint alleging that Farmers had breached its policies by using CCC Intelligent Solutions to apply an undisclosed “condition adjustment” when calculating payouts on total-loss vehicles. The adjustment, Stewart claimed, reduced payments by subtracting an arbitrary amount from the value of comparable vehicles used to determine what the insurer owed. He alleged this practice was never disclosed in the policy and amounted to breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and fraud.
CatIQ, Canada’s insured loss and exposure index provider, and subsidiary of Zurich-based PERILS AG, has released its update of the Canadian insurance IED (industry exposure database) for 2026, which shows that property assets insured against natural perils in Canada have reached a total value of CAD $23 trillion, as at year-end 2025.This marks a 10% year-on-year increase in sums insured, matching the increase seen between year-end 2023 and 2024. While the updated CatIQ IED shows steady growth in sums insured, the database also reflects higher-resolution changes indicative of shifts in the Canadian insurance industry. Providing an example, CatIQ indicated that…
The facts go back a long way. During World War II, the federal government leased and later expanded the Chino Airport for wartime operations, including the dismantling and melting of surplus aircraft into ingots. Those activities generated significant industrial waste that was discharged into the ground. In the 1960s and 70s, during the Vietnam War, tenants at the Airport produced napalm, bombs, and other incendiary devices for sale to the federal government. In 1990, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board determined that decades of industrial activity had contaminated the drinking water downgradient of the site with hazardous levels of trichloroethylene and ordered the…
The backstory, as told in the filing, is familiar to anyone who has worked a surety claim. US Fire says it agreed to back Palace based on a General Indemnity Agreement signed on or about December 28, 2015, and later amended on March 1, 2019. On the strength of that deal, the surety says it executed around 20 performance and payment bonds for contracts with the Town of Hempstead, the Hicksville, Carle Place, Plainview and Port Washington water districts, the City of New York, Nassau County, the Village of Hempstead, and several school districts, including Longwood, Valley Stream, Miller Place and Bridgehampton.…
Global reinsurance giant Swiss Re is back in the catastrophe bond market to sponsor its second issuance of the year, with an initial target to secure $250 million of US named storm per-occurrence based retrocessional protection through a Matterhorn Re Ltd. (Series 2026-2) transaction, Artemis can report.Swiss Re is looking to sponsor with what will become the sixteenth takedown under its Bermuda-based Matterhorn Re catastrophe bond program. This will be the firm’s second catastrophe bond issuance under Matterhorn Re in 2026, having secured $150 million of annual aggregate retro reinsurance from a Matterhorn Re 2026-1 cat bond in February. Swiss Re…
Dore says it mobilized in February 2025 and, by early June 2025, had completed “approximately 95% of the physical demolition,” with the remaining work “primarily below grade.” Despite that, MIG/Rockford allegedly terminated Dore’s contract on June 6, 2025, citing nonperformance while, the filing claims, denying schedule relief for excusable delays and at the same time requiring acceleration of the work.
Farmers is pursuing three theories. First, negligence – that A.O. Smith didn’t take reasonable care in designing, testing, and marketing the heater, and didn’t give consumers clear enough warnings or instructions. Second, strict product liability – covering design defects, manufacturing defects, component defects, and a failure to warn, with Farmers alleging a safer alternative design was available and economically viable when the unit was built. And third, breach of warranty – both the express six-year manufacturer’s warranty and the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose under the Uniform Commercial Code and Texas law.
Australian insurance giant Suncorp has entered into a five-year aggregate reinsurance arrangement commencing on June 30th, 2026, which will provide the firm with AUD $800 million of protection annually, and up to $2.4 billion in total protection across the 5-year period.As per the announcement, the attachment point for the aggregate cover is indexed to Suncorp’s growth in exposure over time and is set at $1,850 million for FY’27. This represents an attachment point of $50 million above the expected natural hazard allowance (NHA) for FY’27 of $1,800 million, excluding claims handling expenses (CHE) and profit commission. Suncorp also confirmed that…
Four days later, on February 2, 2026, Goldstone resigned. The carrier alleges that, on that same day, Scholarships.com signed an application to raise its EPL limit from $5,000 to $500,000, and asked for the change to be backdated to February 1 – one day before the resignation. The application reached Hartford on February 10, 2026. Goldstone filed her charge with the Illinois Department of Human Rights on or about February 18, 2026, and it was tendered to Hartford on or about March 3, 2026.
The private equity-backed anesthesia provider bought and bullied its way to market dominance in Texas, driving up prices for patients, the FTC alleged. The parties have now reached a deal, though USAP will not admit liability.
Lawley Hires Fisher, Employee Benefits Consultant, and Street, Insurance Advisor Ryan Lynn Fisher Lawley, headquartered in Buffalo, New York, Hired Ryan Lynn Fisher as an employee benefits consultant in Buffalo and Carrie Street as a property and casualty insurance advisor in Rochester. Bringing more than 25 years of experience across carriers, third-party administrators, and pharmacy benefit management, Fisher specializes in benefit planning, alternative funding solutions, pharmacy optimization, and long-term cost management. She previously served as a senior account executive at Independent Health. Carrie Street With more than a decade of insurance experience, Street specializes in insurance programs for manufacturing, construction,…
The story, as Farm Bureau tells it, starts on January 16, 2023, at a Wal-Mart Superstore in Amite, Louisiana. A shipment of plants from Farm Bureau’s insured, Neal Mast and Son Greenhouses, was being unloaded when a rack allegedly fell on a man named Jeffrey Lewis. The hi/lo – a forklift – was being operated by a Wal-Mart employee, Brian Matherne. Lewis sued Wal-Mart, the greenhouse, Matherne, and Peak Transportation.