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 ...
California Insurance Market in Crisis
• “Has anybody addressed the issue at this point of getting insurance?”
• “No [insurance] company can offer products that lose money over the long run because the company will simply cease to exist.”
The palpable sense of desperation was apparent in the question of a distressed insurance agent and the statement from a carrier representative during a four-hour California Department of Insurance workshop in July. CDI wanted interested parties to weigh in on the use of catastrophe models in ratemaking but many participants testified about the worst insurance crisis in decades instead.
This edition examines insurance and reinsurance market troubles in California and Florida, proposed and in-progress fixes. Included are profiles of tech-providers focusing in on climate-driven risks contributing to the market problems and their tools to analyze them.
In This Issue
Cover Story: Insurance Market Crisis
Regulatory Weaknesses, Politics Driving California Exits, Industry CEOs Say
A trio of property/casualty carrier executives voluntarily offered their views on a growing insurance availability crisis in the state of California at an industry conference in late June, pointing ...
Insurers Have Their Say
California's growing availability crisis is poised to get worse unless changes to ratemaking beyond the introduction of forward-looking catastrophe modeling take ...
A Community-Based Solution: How Actuaries and Fire Chiefs Can Tackle WUI Risk Together
Why is wildfire risk such a challenging area for insurers and communities?
As fire chiefs, we are regularly asked about the increasing ...
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 ...
Safer From Wildfires
Commissioner Lara's new regulation, California Code of Regulations Section 2644.9. Consideration of Mitigation Factors; Wildfire Risk Models, effective Oct. 14, 2022, ...
Executive Viewpoint
Viewpoint: Closing the Gap on Insurance to Value in Property Policies
Inadequate valuation of physical assets in property policies results in a shortfall in premium collected, which in turn hinders the ability to rebuild fully after a ...
Underwriting
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 ...
How Reinsurers Can Win in the Game of Volatility
Successful reinsurance businesses strive for profit stability while promising to reduce the volatility that their cedents experience.
But ...
Risk
Transforming Enterprise Risk Management From 'Have To' to 'Want To'
Enterprise risk management (ERM) can be like eating your vegetables or doing homework as a youngster: Most kids didn't particularly enjoy it; they only did it because ...
5 Emerging Risks to Watch: 'Evil Digital Twins,' Climate Change, 'Forever Chemicals' in Tap Water
In this edition of Risk Alerts, Carrier Management highlights "evil digital twins," climate risks, "subsurface heat islands" and the presence of PFAS in U.S. tap ...
D&O Underwriters May Be Worried About the Wrong Greenhouse Gas
Greenwashing lawsuits, while still relatively uncommon, have seen an uptick in recent years, with some alleging harm to consumers and others alleging harm to ...
Leadership and Management
8 Tips to Recharge Your Engine
In this edition of Leadership Tips, Carrier Management has gathered some expert advice to help you relax, reset and recharge your leadership engine.
Technology and Automation
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.
Loss Trends for Severe Convective Storms
Loss trends for severe convective storms (SCS) have increased over the past 15 years and even more during the past five years, according to Dan Dick, global head of ...
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 ...
'Synthetic' Agents? Lemonade Says Finance Deal Limits Cash Burn
Late last week, Lemonade announced a financial agreement to borrow 80 percent of the costs it incurs to acquire insurance customers from a venture firm. The InsurTech carrier revealed the deal in a ...
How Lawyers Sank Florida Carriers — and Target 'Travellers' With SEO
A troubling phone exchange reveals a problem for insurance carriers that started in Florida and is expanding beyond the state's borders, according to an actuary who ...
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 ...
Research
Understanding the Impact of Recessions on Workers Compensation
Workers and employers in the U.S. have endured 17 recessions during NCCI's 100 years of operation.
Recessions produce far-reaching ...
From the Editor
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 ...