Category Archives: Insurance

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Talk of Flood Insurance at RIMS on the Hill

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Moderator Leigh Ann Pusey and speakers Matt Gannon, Joshua Saks and Austin Perez.

At this week’s RIMS on the Hill conference, attendees gathered to hear remarks from a few industry experts regarding the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). It has been well publicized how the program has faced major setbacks in recent years. Three noted figures were at RIMS on the Hill to give their take on how to get the program back on track. They were:

Matt Gannon — Assistant vice president of federal affairs for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC). He also serves as lead liaison to Capitol Hill on public policy matters impacting his industry and policyholders across the nation.

Joshua Saks — National Wildlife Federation’s Legislative Director, who has helped set strategy and coordinate outreach to members of Congress on key campaign priorities, including clean water and wetlands issues, energy policy, deferral appropriations for wildlife conservation and protection of public lands in Alaska and the Rocky Mountain west.

Austin Perez — A senior policy analyst with the National Association of REALTORS, where his subject matter expertise ranges from property rights and land use to energy and environmental issues. Long-term flood insurance reauthorization and reform has been his chief focus and an association top priority.

Matt – “The NFIP is vitally important to our nation — it’s something that affects us all. We are seeking to improve a government program and also hoping to preserve it. The NFIP has accrued a significant amount of debt as result of the 2005 storm season. In part because of one of the major flaws in the program — they don’t take into account risk. What we’re looking for is primarily to ensure that the NFIP is reformed so that it reflects a private insurance model.

One fundamental deficiency is that no one is making sure flood insurance plans don’t lapse.

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Congress has made a lot of progress — there was HR 1309 — but short-term authorizations, as well as lapses, are significant disruptions to the marketplace. Mandatory purchase should be enforced wherever possible. What we wanted to do [with “flood the Hill“] was to replicate the noise that Congress hears after a lapse. We want to get all the groups calling for flood insurance reform to call Congress. We’re not going to let our foot off the gas. We want [the Senate] to move forward with comprehensive reform.”

Josh – “Flood plains are tremendous areas for many things. They are recreation areas — our members benefit from them. Those areas allow groundwater recharge. They act as buffers when there is pollution since they stop pollution from entering waterways. They’re also habitats for wild animals and endangered species. And the best benefit — naturally functioning flood plains, which are the best flood prevention method money can buy.

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[The National Wildlife Federation] believes in holistic management of a flood plain. We need to take into account altered hydrology, more severe weather, more storm frequency, etc.”

Austin – “The only way you can get major reform in this town is to get everyone going the same direction — the realtor group, the insurers, everyone. They key point here is that there is no group out there that is not pushing for this. We’re all in favor of a 5-year reauthorization — that’s the first step.

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This is the 18th extension of NFIP since 2008*.

We have home buyers who may want to buy but don’t know if they’re in a flood zone and they don’t know whether or not there is going to be flood insurance. This economy relies on real estate transactions. This is an economy where we want to move as many transactions as possible, but we can’t without a flood insurance program reform. We need an accurate set of flood plain maps. We don’t think its fair for homeowners to get a notice saying they need flood insurance if they’re not really in a flood plain. Put the senators on the spot and ask, ‘Are you with us?'”

*According to calculations from the National Association of REALTORS

Travelers CEO Jay Fishman Speaks on the “American Opportunity”

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A while back, I wrote a story on racial diversity — or, more accurately, the lack thereof — in the risk and insurance industry. There were several people I talked to whose words have stayed with me even almost four years later. Specifically, I remember a few days spent in Philadelphia at the annual conference of the National African-American Insurance Association (NAAIA).

It was an interesting place to be while I, a white guy, was writing about what it is like for nonwhites to work in an industry that even today remains racially homogeneous to a staggering degree. Of the few hundred attendees there, I was one of about five white people. The awkwardness that I felt by this (at times … everyone was overwhelmingly welcoming), especially while walking around with a reporter hat on essentially asking everyone “So … what’s it like to be black?,”  provided an excellent means to frame my understanding of how black people working in insurance must feel all the time. It is just strange to be unlike virtually everyone else around you from such a fundamental, identity-establishing perspective.

It was somewhat ironic, then, that the most enduring memory I have from those few days was provided by another person just like me: a white dude who stood out like a tourist. Jay Fishman, CEO and chairman of Travelers, gave a speech to discuss what his company was doing to try to promote better diversity at his company.

Here is how I wrote about it at the time.

[The September 2008] NAAIA conference in Philadelphia was particularly memorable as it marked both the association’s tenth anniversary as well as the first time the CEO of a major insurer gave a keynote address. Travelers chairman and CEO Jay Fishman spoke to around 200 people over lunch and was visibly emotional as he articulated his feelings on the industry’s legacy of exclusion and his company’s struggles to overcome the past.

“I’m outside my zone of comfort and to not acknowledge that, I’d be lying,” said Fishman. “I’m in awe of this group. My awkwardness is born out of sensitivity — not out of an unwillingness to tackle the subject.”

While Fishman admitted that Travelers may not have been focused on diversity for as long as some of the other carriers and brokers in the industry, he also expressed a personal commitment and discussed his company’s recent diversity program advancements. “There has been an awakening to the inequities of the past,” said Fishman. “We’re not where we want to be, but at best, we’re headed in the right direction. At best.”

When I wrote that he was visibly emotional, I mean that he might have actually been crying on stage. He was clearly choked up throughout his presentation and really seemed to be going through something while addressing an audience of black people and telling them that, essentially, his industry was still failing to include them just as much as it had been doing for the past century.

I’m not sure exactly what all this has to do with the video below. But the clip was made by Travelers and it shows Fishman talking about how he has “been a remarkable beneficiary of the American opportunity” while discussing how his grandmother immigrated to the United States from Russia when she was 13 years old to work a sewing machine.

So that just struck a chord and reminded me of a time when he seemed to also realize how unique his American story was — and how genuinely I once saw him expressing how much he wishes that others could benefit from that same opportunity just as much as he has.

Discussing Trends at the Advisen Casualty Conference

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At Tuesday’s Advisen Casualty Conference here in New York, a hot topic was that of trends within the industry. It was clear that Stan Galanski, president and CEO of Navigators, had put some thought into the topic, coming up with the following trends he feels are important to the industry:

  • Globalization — “There is a need for global product liability coverage,” said Galanski. We need to look no further than the UK Bribery Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (the recent news involving Walmart is a good example).
  • Miniaturization — “We’ve gone from records to 8-tracks to CDs to iPods to the cloud,” said Galanski, talking about how the density of electronic components can be construed as a risk. He referenced the case of Intuitive Surgery, Inc., the maker of the da Vinci surgical robot, which has allegedly caused numerous injuries and at least one death — that of a 24-year-old woman who was undergoing a hysterectomy when the robot caused burns to an artery and her intestines, which led to her death two weeks later.
  • Disintermediaton — By this, Galanski means the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain. “So what exposures are risk managers picking up with the absence of these people and/or businesses?” Though disintermediation may be more cost effective, it comes with added risk.
  • Personalization — When you open iTunes, the application suggests songs you may like based on your recent purchases or downloads. The same goes for Amazon. When you log into the site, it suggests new books or apparel you may want to purchase based on past buying habits. “It’s a great feeling as a consumer, but as a risk manager it brings concerns about your business’ laptops and computers.
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    “

These are indeed interesting observations of trends, but they are, in fact, only one man’s opinion. But we learn by sharing. With that in mind, I ask you what trends you’re noticing within the casualty industry?

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Advisen Casualty Conference Cautions on Severity

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At the second annual Casualty Insights Conference held yesterday in New York, Stan Galanski, president and CEO of Navigators, cautioned those in attendance about not so much the frequency of claims he’s seeing in the industry, but the severity of each. Galanski referenced the below clip from the movie The Graduate:

After which he exclaimed, “Today, I have one word for you…severity!”

Of course, we need to look no further than 2011 catastrophes to see the impact of severity on claims. Though there may have been fewer claims compared with the past, the impact has been much more costly than any previous year on record. But there are other, maybe not so well known, examples of high severity claims cases, such as:

  • Middleton vs Collins: The case of an 8-year-old boy who was intentionally set on fire by a neighbor. The reward to the family of the victim was a record $150 billion.
  • Pacesetter Inc. vs Nervicon: The case of St. Jude subsidiary Pacesetter and former engineer Yonging Zou, who used his access to confidential information to found a competing company, Nervicon, in China. St. Jude Medical won $2.3 billion in the case.
  • Allison vs Exxon Mobil Corp: A 2006 gasoline leak in Maryland was the impetus to a lawsuit filed on behalf of 160 plaintiffs. The jury awarded $1.5 billion in punitive damages in addition to $495 million in compensation for damage.
  • DuPont vs Kolon Industries Inc.: The theft of trade secrets regarding the manufacture of Kevlar prompted this lawsuit, in which a jury found South Korea-based Kolon guilty and awarded DuPont $919.9 million.

These are just a few examples of the harrowing severity of recent claims.

So why is this happening? What has prompted this uptick in severity? Galanski points to a “cultural shift,” explaining that “things have changed and there’s a strong sentiment stemming from the financial crisis — one which says we must punish the evil doers.”

If this is true, big businesses, if they haven’t already, should prepare accordingly.