Montauk Point Ltd., a Bermuda-based firm that provides independent advisory and strategic advice to third-party risk capital providers, has appointed 35-year insurance and reinsurance veteran Dr. Gero Michel to lead its risk and analytics platform.Montauk Point was launched in early 2025 by well-known reinsurance industry executive Adam Szakmary. The company refers to itself as a partner in navigating the complexities of re/insurance market capital participation. The company also specialises in helping third-party capital providers in areas such as portfolio construction, portfolio management lifecycle objectives, and other strategic portfolio considerations. Montauk Point is further enhancing its leadership team with the addition…
Author: Awais
The Host Recent polling finds that health costs are a top worry for much of the American public, while Republicans in Congress are considering still more cuts to federal health spending on programs such as Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado cannot ban mental health professionals from using “conversion therapy” to treat LGBTQ+ minors, a decision that’s likely to affect other states with similar laws. This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Sandhya Raman of Bloomberg Law. Among…
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday announced charges against a York County man accused of buying scrapped vehicles at a bargain, insuring them, and reporting accidents that never happened to receive lucrative insurance payouts. Taofiq Salami, of York Haven, has been charged with insurance fraud, identity theft, forgery, and title washing, among other related charges, according to prosecutors. According to an attorney general investigation, Salami used false and stolen identities — and co-conspirators — to purchase and insure the scrapped vehicles. He then reported accidents that didn’t happen to obtain more than $180,000 in insurance payouts, Sunday’s offi e said.. Prosecutors…
California is heading into its dry season with just a fraction of the snow it typically has across its highest peaks at the end of its winter months, raising the prospects of drought across the most populous U.S. state. Statewide, California has just 18% of the snow a normal winter would bring to its mountains, according to the Department of Water Resources. The hardest-hit areas are in the northern Sierra Nevada range where just 6% of the normal snow was recorded, followed by the central region with 21% and southern region with 32%. Related: LA Utility Taps Muni Market as…
Aon Securities, the broker-dealer and investment banking arm of the broking giant, believes catastrophe bond market and broader third-party reinsurance capital activities will remain robust through the rest of 2026, according to CEO Richard Pennay.A number of factors are expected to keep driving cat bond and broader insurance-linked securities (ILS) market activity levels, with levels of capital available key to this. On the one hand, investor appetite for accessing returns from insurance and reinsurance related risks remains high. While a second capital factor is the availability of capital from maturing cat bond and other third-party capital arrangements, which will require…
Hailstorms drove record insured damages as severe convective storms become more common and damaging, popping up in new places—and even storms producing small hailstones are posing unforeseen threats, a new report shows. An Allianz Commercial report out this week shows the frequency and intensity of SCS events continue to increase, pushing global insured losses into the billions of dollars. The risk report examines the growing SCS threat, which can come with little to no warning and pose “knock-on effects” like flash flooding. According to Alllianz, SCS events amounted to $60 billion last year, or nearly half of all insured natural…
When pollution gets bad enough in the rivers supplying Iowa’s largest city with drinking water, it costs Des Moines around $16,000 a day to run a special system to filter out dangerous nitrates. It’s a fact of life in the agriculture-dependent state — and climate change is making the water quality problem even worse. The nitrates come from fertilizer and pesticides that make their way into the soil and then waterways like the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. It’s not usually a problem in winter, but this year Iowa’s capital had to filter in January and February — just the…
Jurors failed to reach a verdict on Tuesday in the corruption trial of two fired FirstEnergy Corp. executives charged with alleged roles in a $60 million scheme to bribe politicians for a $1 billion nuclear bailout and other favors. The declaration of an impasse came after more than eight days of deliberations following the six-week trial in Akron of former CEO Chuck Jones and former senior vice president Michael Dowling. Over that time, the jury had repeatedly sent clarifying questions to Summit County Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross, who had once before sent them back into the deliberating room…
Federal law enforcement officials report they arrested Zhan Petrosyants, charging him with operating an extensive no-fault automobile insurance fraud scheme that involved submitting tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent medical claims and laundering the proceeds. Petrosyants, 44, also known as “Johnny,” of Edgewater, New Jersey, is charged with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The scheme was allegedly carried out between 2018 and 2023, causing insurance providers to be billed tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent no-fault medical claims. The arrest of Petrosyants, who media…
A commercial fleet lender is paying $1.64 million to settle allegations it made false claims to take advantage of a loan loss insurance program. California Attorney General Rob Bonta settled with Crossroads Equipment Lease and Finance over alleged false claims for reimbursements under the California Capital Access Program after an investigation by the California Department of Justice validated found Crossroads took advantage the CalCAP loan loss insurance program by making minimal efforts to sell trucks it repossessed from borrowers who defaulted knowing the program would reimburse any losses. The purpose of CalCAP is to encourage lenders to issue loans to…
A Trump-appointed federal judge in South Texas this week dismissed a lawsuit filed by a woman in the Rio Grande Valley who alleged that her rights were violated after prosecutors charged her with murder in a controversial case that made global headlines after she self-induced an abortion. Lizelle Gonzalez, who went by Herrera and was 26 years old at the time of her arrest in 2022, sought $1 million in federal damages in the 2024 suit after she was initially detained, arguing that she was wrongly arrested and accusing local officials of malicious prosecution and conspiracy. According to federal court…
Clinicians’ use of an AI scribe was associated with 13 fewer minutes each day inside electronic health records and 16 fewer minutes on documenting patient care, according to the research published in JAMA.
Kroger Texas L.P. – Houston Division, operator of Kroger grocery store #300 in Houston’s Clear Lake/NASA area, violated federal employment law when it failed to accommodate and then fired an employee because of her disability, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed last week. In its lawsuit, the EEOC charged that a self-service checkout attendant suffering from neuropathy, who for three preceding years worked successfully using a walker, was stripped of that reasonable accommodation by new management. The employee’s neuropathy limited her ability to walk and move, and her feet went numb if she was…
A committee of senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration voted on Tuesday to exempt the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry from a federal law meant to protect endangered species including whales, birds and sea turtles. The decision, the first of its kind in more than three decades, is the latest government effort to unwind environmental regulations that Trump says hold back domestic energy production. The meeting of the Endangered Species Committee, nicknamed the “God Squad” because of its power to grant exemptions to the Nixon-era Endangered Species Act, was attended by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who requested…