Author Archives: Jared Wade

About Jared Wade

Jared Wade is a freelance writer and former editor of the Risk Management Monitor and senior editor of Risk Management magazine. You can find more of his writing at JaredWade.com.
Игроки всегда ценят удобный и стабильный доступ к играм. Для этого идеально подходит зеркало Вавады, которое позволяет обходить любые ограничения, обеспечивая доступ ко всем бонусам и слотам. LeapWallet is a secure digital wallet that enables easy management of cryptocurrencies. With features like fast transactions and user-friendly interface, it's perfect for both beginners and experts. Check it out at leapwallet.lu.

Willis to Sponsor Brooklyn Nets Arena; Joe Plumeri Looking Forward to Working with Jay-Z

Posted on by

Just days after Aon officially unveiled its new, marque sports sponsorship, rival insurance broker Willis has announced one of its own. OK, it hasn’t aligned with the most popular soccer team in the world like Aon. But Willis has partnered with the arena that will soon be home to the worst team in the NBA …

… so there’s that.

All kidding aside, though, partnering with the the Nets future home, the Barclays Center, should be a good move for Willis.

Sure, the New Jersey Nets finished with the worst record of any professional basketball team last season, but they are on the rise and will soon be moving to Brooklyn (likely by 2012). For a company that has been reinventing itself and quickly expanding its reach over the past few years — first with a game-changing acquisition of HRH in 2008 and then in buying the world-renowned Sears Tower in 2009 — this is just another targeted get-the-name-out-there move.

New York is the world financial capital and, now, Willis will have a presence alongside what is sure to be a major headline-grabbing organization for years to come. When it comes to the big three professional sports leagues in the United States (the NFL, MLB and NBA), there hasn’t been a new franchise in the city since the New York Mets were founded in 1962. And Brooklyn hasn’t had its own team since the Dodgers left for California in 1958. Although there is some major opposition to arena that Willis will be putting its name within (mostly due to a corporate, revenue-seeking stadium being put square in the heart of the borough and displacing many long-time residents), there is little doubt that the NBA team that plays there will also be embraced by many others. Within its first few weeks there — even if the team is not great — the Brooklyn Nets will become one of the toughest tickets to get in all of New York. There will be buzz aplenty about the Barclays Center.

So it’s no wonder that Joe Plumeri is excited to team up with the Barclays Center, the future home of the Nets.

“Brooklyn is a great global brand that’s reaching new heights with the Barclays Center. The borough has earned a storied place in sports mythology, from the heroics at Ebbets Field to being the birthplace of legends such as Vince Lombardi, Joe Torre and Joe Paterno,” said Joe Plumeri, Chairman and CEO of Willis.

buy zyprexa online sinusys.com/email/img/jpg/zyprexa.html no prescription pharmacy

“Willis helps manage the world’s most complex risks, and we look forward to both helping the Barclays Center through its multi-faceted construction process and, when the arena is opened, to working with Mikhail Prokhorov, Bruce Ratner, Brett Yormark, Jay-Z and their team to carry Jackie Robinson’s legacy forward and bring a new generation of champions to Brooklyn and New York.”

Yes, that’s right.

Plumeri is looking forward to working with rap mogul Jay-Z, who is a minority owner of the team.

buy periactin online sinusys.com/email/img/jpg/periactin.html no prescription pharmacy

buy temovate online https://royalcitydrugs.com/temovate.html no prescription

 It seems fitting, then, that just a few years after we published an article about Jay-Z’s enormous endorsement power, Joe is now signing on to sponsor a team Jay (sorta) owns. Maybe he can get Mr. Z to rhyme a few songs about insurance broking?

Crazier things have happened.

Jay-Z-Prokhorov-BluePrint

Along with minority owner/rap legend Jay-Z and real owner/Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, Willis is joining the Nets Brooklyn blueprint for greatness by partnering with the Barclays Center that will become the team’s home.

buy strattera online sinusys.com/email/img/jpg/strattera.html no prescription pharmacy

The Mets Are Trying to Give You Salmonella

Posted on by

Mets Citi Field

Like clockwork, the New York Mets fill their fans with heartache every September. Now, it looks like they’re trying to get an early start on some stomach aches, too.

According to ESPN’s list of stadium “vendor inspection reports,” Citi Field is rife with health code violations, at least one of which included a bunch of warm, raw chicken being stored on premises

Citi Field
New York Mets
Vendors with critical violations: 45%
Inspection report excerpt: Inspectors found 20 pounds of grilled chicken registered at 70 degrees in a refrigerator, about 30 degrees warmer than allowed.

Yuck.

But the Mets are far from the worst offenders. The Consumerist has compiled it’s “Top 10 Disgusting Stadium Food Vendor Health Violations.” (I presume they mean the “top” 10.)

Look what’s going on in Miami — in a stadium named after an insurance company no less.

Sun Life Stadium
Miami Dolphins, Florida Marlins
Vendors with critical violations: 93%
Inspection report excerpt: In June 2009, an employee complained anonymously that small insects and other debris were blended into frozen alcoholic beverages at a stand where equipment wasn’t being cleaned. When inspectors checked, they issued a critical violation for a buildup of slime inside the frozen drinks machine.

I guess the lesson here is to stick to the peanuts and Cracker Jacks.

In related news, Claire Wilkinson of the wonderful III blog Terms + Conditions just wrote an interesting post on food safety. Focusing on an op-ed from this Sunday’s New York Times urging Congress to improve standards and grant more authority to the FDA.

While the elderly and people with compromised immune systems face an elevated risk from food borne pathogens like listeria, campylobacter and salmonella, by far the most vulnerable group are children under the age of four.

The economic cost of the problem is also huge. A recent study sponsored by Pew Charitable Trusts puts the total annual health-related cost of food-borne illness in the U.S. at about $152 billion.

Schlosser notes that legislation in the Senate would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to order the recall of contaminated foods and punish companies that knowingly sell them. It would also improve the FDA’s ability to trace outbreaks back to their source.

No word, however, on whether or not the FDA can help the Mets crawl back into the Wild Card race.

Learning Through Destruction at FM Global

Posted on by

FMglobal

FM Global’s Research Campus is one of the more interesting things about the insurance industry. Basically, what the company did was build a giant, airplane-hanger-sized warehouse so it would have a place to blow things up. It’s not all fun and pyromania, however. The real value comes from what FM Global observes.

By testing the destructive potential of certain disaster scenarios, the company is able to better understand how building materials, walls, windows, roofs, houses, warehouses and even entire industrial facilities can be fortified to withstand the worst.

It’s all about loss control, really.

For example, the company might do an experiment to find out how much wind it takes to compromise the structural integrity of the Model ABC Roof Flashing sold by XYZ Company if it is installed with 12 half-inch nails. If the wind exposure (both in MPH and duration) that sends the flashing flying is a realistic figure to expect in a certain location (say, Florida) then you now know that it is not the best building material to use if you’re building a tiki restaurant in South Beach. On the other hand, if the flashing does withstand 160 mph winds for 30 minutes, the company now knows it won’t fail in anything but the most catastrophic storm.

Such knowledge is great for the industry at large — it helps all stakeholders learn how building materials hold up in disasters. And the proprietary results are even better for FM Global — they help the company be extremely confident in its underwriting decisions.

Rudd Bosman explains as much in the video below, which complements a new article on the campus that Fortune published in its latest issue. “We spent well over $100 million in capital expense on this facility. It’s absolutely worth it. It’s where we learn what we need to do to prevent losses from happening. That knowledge is invaluable.”

A few years ago, our Editor in Chief Morgan O’Rourke got the chance to tour FM Global’s Research Campus on a day where some serious explosions were taking place.

Outside, it was a quiet, clear January day in the woods of western Rhode Island. But hidden just off the road, in a relatively nondescript structure, I stood in awe some 100 feet away from the largest fire that I had ever seen. A fuel leak had caused a blaze nearly three stories high with flames so intense that the facility’s emergency sprinkler systems were actually making it worse. When the water came in contact with the burning fuel, it caused a reaction much like what happens when water is splashed on a grease fire in the kitchen. Huge fireballs erupted, threatening to engulf the ceiling and the sensitive machinery located there. Even from my distant vantage point, it was very hot and very impressive. It was also a simulation. Welcome to just another day at the office for the scientists and engineers at the FM Global Research Campus.

Check out the rest of Morgan’s feature for more on the most destructive place in insurance.

You can also find more about the campus on FM Global’s website.

Financial Reform and Regulatory Expansion

Posted on by

Whether you like it or not, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is now law. Passed by the Senate finally last week and signed by President Obama yesterday, financial reform will have wide-ranging implications for the financial services sector (including the insurance industry), the rest of corporate America and, really, just the whole country.

The most immediate effect will be the creation of new regulatory groups.

The National Law Review published a great breakdown. Here are the four more interesting additions.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Will write consumer protection rules for banks and nonbank financial firms offering consumers financial services or products and ensure that consumers are protected from “unfair, deceptive, or abusive” acts or practices.

Federal Insurance Office
Will monitor all aspects of the insurance agency and identify issues or gaps in regulation that could lead to systemic risk.  Based upon its findings, the FIO will make recommendations to the FSOC regarding insurance institutions that pose a systemic risk and should be subject to greater regulatory oversight.

Financial Stability Oversight Council
Will identify risks and emerging threats to the financial stability of the United States arising from large bank holding companies and systemically important nonbank financial companies and respond with appropriate regulation to reduce the risk from their size and activities.

Office of Financial Research
Will have the power to subpoena financial information from institutions under the supervision of the Fed.  The OFR may require periodic and other reports from any nonbank financial company or bank holding companies.

The law also includes provisions surrounding “too big to fail,” the “Volker rule,” derivatives, hedge funds and “predatory” lending, but the regulatory changes are the most significant. And while it will be interesting to see how these new agencies take shape, the expanded mission of the SEC is the real story here.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the SEC has been an abject failure since (at least) the turn of the millennium. I’m sure there was some good work done by the agency during this time, but if its core mission is to safeguard Americans from being duped by the unintelligible complexity masking the activity of Wall Street, the financial watchdog could not have performed more miserably. On its watch, complex, risk-laden transactions proliferated and — once the mirage of risk-free mortgage securities disappeared — ran the global economy head first into a brick wall. And this failure to check the financial institutions culpable was so great that, more than two years after Bear Stearns collapsed, nearly 10% of Americans still can’t find a job.

The Washington Post details the SEC’s expansion.

The SEC is required to issue 95 new regulations governing a wide swath of the financial sector, dozens more than the Federal Reserve, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or other federal agencies. The SEC is also slated to complete 17 one-time studies and five new ongoing reports, according to a tally by the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.

The SEC will serve on the new Financial Stability Oversight Council, a new interagency body meant to spot emerging risks to the overall financial system. It will have to write rules to supervise the multibillion-dollar market of derivatives linked to stocks and bonds. It will begin examining the activities of hedge funds and private equity firms and tighten oversight of credit-rating agencies. And it will do studies of short selling and whether brokerage and investment firms must meet higher standards.

Perhaps only the Office of Thrift Supervision can compete with the SEC in terms of the new law’s impact. But in contrast to the SEC, which is gaining so many new responsibilities, OTS, which regulated home lenders, is being abolished.

Indeed, the SEC is coming out of the financial regulatory overhaul far stronger than many observers of the agency might have anticipated.

While in some ways it seems counterintuitive to task what some have perceived to be a failed agency with greater authority, I suppose some body has to do it. And change — for the better — is theoretically what reform is all about.

So … Enter a new stage of regulation, as John Lester and John Bovenzi succinctly point out.

Enactment of Dodd-Frank … marks only a new stage of financial reform, as the debate shifts to the rulemaking efforts of federal agencies. The complexity of the law and the many decisions delegated to regulators makes it difficult to predict which of the law’s many provisions will come to be the most significant. Ultimately, it will be regulators who determine the true impact of the law.

And that’s what has so many people scared — including business leaders who think regulators will be too draconian and SEC critics who think regulators will be too inept.