Underwriting
Hard Market Pressure: Surplus Lines Lifting Heavy Load in Turbulent Times
As the longest hard market in memory refuses to fade, standard property/casualty carriers are not only continuing to raise prices but also reimagining their books by shedding risks they no longer ...
Grid-by-Grid: How One Tech Firm Dissects California Wildfire Risk to Sell Insurance and Reinsurance
There is general consensus among insurance and reinsurance underwriters about the safest property risks to accept in the California market, according to the co-founder of a company that uses ...
Evacuation Policies and Cat Strips: Wildfire Insurance and Reinsurance Ideas That Failed
Sometimes, it takes a few tries to develop the right insurance or reinsurance product—one that will align well with the needs and wants of customers. Kettle, a company that uses technology to ...
The Care and Feeding of Property-Catastrophe Models
A wise statistician once said: "All models are wrong, but some are useful." The key to getting useful (accurate) model results is working with models that fit specific underwriting needs and making ...
The Long Tail: Aftermath of Disaster
While I was doing research for this edition, I came across these paragraphs, written by one of the leaders of a technology company, recalling a previous role he had working in disaster relief. After ...
The Art and Science of Underwriting in an Era of Evolving Risk
Insurance underwriters are seemingly pulled in many directions today as risks quickly evolve, from extreme weather events to changes in the legal and regulatory landscape to general inflation trends. ...
California Wildfires Dwindle as Premiums Surge
In their 1999 paean to California, the Red Hot Chili Peppers sang that "Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation." The rock band was referring to earthquakes and tidal ...
Are Winds of Change Blowing on California Insurance Law?
It would be wrong to assume that California regulators and lawmakers are only now starting to ponder what to do about a potential insurance crisis in the wildfire-prone state. A state of urgency has ...