“For years, insurers have highlighted that the primary pressures on affordability and availability, such as legal system abuse, building costs, and exposure to extreme weather, lie largely outside the industry’s control,” she said. “We expect the data call findings will affirm that conclusion and show that states which maintain balanced regulatory frameworks – including litigation reform and flexibility in rate, form, and underwriting – deliver the most stable and resilient markets for consumers.”
Author: Awais
Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, has secured a $7.5 million flood insurance policy so some of its poorest residents can access relief when disaster strikes. The policy covers up to 4 million people in the coastal megacity, according to a statement Thursday [March 26] by the Insurance Development Forum, a public-private partnership that works with some of the world’s largest insurers to bridge protection gaps in vulnerable markets. “Climate inaction could cost Lagos State just under $40 billion by 2050,” Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said in the statement. “This pioneering parametric flood insurance policy strengthens our ability to protect lives, livelihoods and…
Olympus Insurance Company, a Florida homeowners specialist, has now successfully secured $120 million of reinsurance protection from its debut Abacab Re Ltd. (Series 2026-1) catastrophe bond sponsorship, with the notes priced approximately 23% below the mid-point of initial guidance, Artemis understands.Olympus Insurance Company began its first-time catastrophe bond sponsorship earlier this month, with an initial target to secure a $100 million capital markets backed source of multi-year Florida named storm reinsurance protection. As we reported in our first update on this transaction, the target size was lifted with up to $150 million of notes set to be issued by Abacab…
Inszone Insurance Services acquired Streeter Brothers Insurance in Billings, Montana. Streeter Brothers Insurance will continue operating from its current Billings location, with the existing team remaining in place. Founded in 1922 by Delton and Delbert Streeter, Streeter Brothers Insurance has operated through multiple generations of ownership. The agency was most recently owned by Linda Schmaing, who began her career with Streeter Brothers in 1986 and purchased the agency in 2016. Sacramento, California-based Inszone is an insurance brokerage firm offering property/casualty and employee benefits services. Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Was this article valuable? Yes No Here are more articles you may…
A new analysis from the California Department of Insurance and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners shows that rebuilding the communities destroyed by the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires to a standard set by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety could reduce projected wildfire losses by one-third on average. The modeled how community-wide adoption of science-based building and landscaping standards in the Altadena and Palisades area affects average annual loss— a metric insurers rely on when deciding whether to write policies in a given area. Related: ‘Nation’s First’ Smoke Damage Standards Bill Wending Through California Legislature The…
Last summer, Lorena Alvarado Hill received a series of unexpected medical bills. A teacher’s aide in Melbourne, Florida, Hill is a single mom who works shifts at J.Crew on the weekends to send her daughter to college. Hill and her mother, who lives with her, had been enrolled in an insurance plan through HealthFirst. Hill paid nothing toward the premiums for the government-subsidized plan, which previously had covered her scans and other appointments. Then the bills came. Hill was on the hook for a $2,966.93 MRI, as well as more than half a dozen doctor visits costing about $200 or…
A school bus crash in west Tennessee on Friday killed two students and injured at least seven other people, officials said. The crash involving a Tennessee Department of Transportation dump truck, a Chevrolet Trailblazer and the school bus took place at about noon on Highway 70 in Carroll County, said Maj. Travis Plotzer, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Plotzer said details of the crash were still being sorted out, but it appeared that the transportation department dump truck did not contribute to the crash itself. Plotzer said there were a total of 25 students and five adults on…
Separate natural gas explosions in January 2024 that destroyed two homes in Jackson, Mississippi resulted from underground pipes pulling loose from their fittings as spongy clay soil expanded and contracted with rainfall, according to a federal report released Thursday. The first explosion killed Clara Barbour, 82. The National Transportation Safety Board found that the natural gas utility in the city, Dallas-based Atmos Energy Corp., had detected the leaks before the explosions, but didn’t evaluate them as severe enough for quick repair. The board also found that Atmos didn’t do enough to assess risks and make repairs to its pipeline system…
More than 100 homeowners have charged in a lawsuit that officials in Sarasota County, Florida, failed to maintain a dike for years, allowing Hurricane Debby’s floodwaters to inundate homes throughout an upscale subdivision. “Engineering modeling analysis has confirmed that without the breach of the Cow Pen Slough dike, there would have been no flooding of the interior of the homes in Laurel Meadows,” reads the lawsuit complaint, filed this month in Sarasota County Circuit Court. Hurricane Debby grazed the western flank of the Florida peninsula in August 2024, deluging some areas with as much as 17 inches of rain over…
The Supreme Court disagreed. Writing for the full seven-member bench, Chief Justice Todd focused squarely on the text of the statute. Section 311 of the Workers’ Compensation Act requires injured employees to give notice to their “employer” within 120 days. The Act defines “employer” in two places. Section 103, which applies across the entire Act, defines the term to include natural persons, partnerships, and corporations – but not insurers. Section 401, which sits within Article IV on procedure, broadens the definition to include insurers, but uses the phrase “when used in this article,” expressly limiting that broader definition to Article…
At its core, the bill is trying to build a wall between the parties involved. Insurers and agents would be prohibited from issuing collateral protection insurance on properties that they, or their affiliates, own, service, or hold servicing rights to. The bill also bans compensating, including through the payment of commissions to, lenders, insurers, investors, or servicers on collateral protection insurance policies. Premium and risk sharing between the insurer and the lender, investor, or servicer that obtained the collateral protection insurance is off the table. So are contingent commissions, profit-sharing arrangements, and any payments tied to profitability or loss ratios…
Bank of America agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused the bank of facilitating their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, court records showed on Friday. Lawyers for the bank and the women had told Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff this month that they had reached a “settlement in principle,” but terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time. The settlement requires Rakoff’s approval. The judge scheduled a court hearing for Thursday to consider approving the deal. The proposed class action, filed in October by a woman using the pseudonym…
President Donald Trump announced new loan guarantees for farmers and food suppliers, a bid to bolster US agricultural communities squeezed by the impact of the Iran war, tariffs and other challenges. Trump said the loan guarantees would cover farmers and food suppliers, including vegetable, grain and seed farmers, cattle, pig and poultry producers, as well as grocery wholesalers and others. The Small Business Administration will administer the guarantees, according to a White House official who provided details on the plans ahead of the formal announcement. Trump did not specify a dollar amount for the guarantees. The White House argued that…
Average cyber insurance claim severity for large accounts in the U.S. nearly doubled in 2025, according to a new Chubb report. The insurer’s 2026 Cyber Claims Report found that average severity for businesses with $1 billion or more in revenue reached about $4.4 million in 2025, up from roughly $2.2 million in 2024. That represented a 586% increase from 2021. “While severity remained stable in the SME segment, it increased considerably in the middle market and even more dramatically in the large account segment,” the report said. “There are several contributing factors to this increase, including the rise in business…