Risk & Insurance

Browse past and current articles from this publication.

London Falling.(Poem)
With apologies to Joe Strummer, leader of the rock band The Clash and its ground-breaking London Calling album, here's what he might have written had he recently joined the underwriting team at Lloy . . .

The case of Guzman.(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the editor)
Dear Editor: I read Peter Rousmaniere's column Guzman v. Milpitas Unified School District ease, (Risk & Insurance[R], June 1, 2009, Page 12). He got most of it right. This ease has thrown the syst . . .

Holding their own.(ALT RISK)
AIU Holdings execs are gathering together around their program administration business. There are times when you're talking to a group of executives from one company and you wonder whether they ev . . .

Focused on fiduciary liability.(PROF. LIAB.)
Trends are clear that fiduciary liability is the next perceived target, and plan trustees' and fiduciaries' personal assets at risk. The decision to purchase coverage could be the best remedy for th . . .

Succumbing to a higher sacrifice.(HIGHER EDUCATION)
Higher education administrators face the difficult balance act of managing risk without sacrificing long-term viability for short term financial gain. A took at how it's done at several schools reve . . .

Wars as a laboratory.(RETURNING VETS)
Veterans who suffer from traumatic brain injury are going to provide doctors and surgeons with new opportunities for brain rehabilitation. To read the rest of this piece, please visit us on the We . . .

Securing accurate investment valuations.(INVESTMENT)
Insurers have faced various difficulties as a result of high concentrations of real-estate related assets on the balance sheet, such as MBSs and CDOs. The sooner insurers can get a more accurate rea . . .

Change that channel: selling to the Millennials is going to require rewriting the books on selling and casting aside previous as
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Scene 1 : Picture this image, potent enough to make every carrier executive gasp: A young tattooed man in high-tops, sporting a nose ring and a dyed Mohawk haircut, wearing . . .

Big time swine: the toll from swine flu continues to rise with the number infected in the tens of thousands.(UP FRONT: News, Upd
The World Health Organization declared on June 11 that the current HIN1 outbreak has reached Phase 6. The swine flu has gone big time. For businesses, Phase 6 is the last alarm bell. "It needs t . . .

LEEDing the pack: Marsh is building a reputation in the green design and construction industry.(BROKERS: People, Ideas and Trend
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Green building might be at the forefront of the construction industry's attention, but it comprises a very small percentage of the entire industry a . . .

Lockton Dunning Benefits.(BROKER MOVES)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] STEVE BOHANNON joined Dallas-based health and welfare consulting company Lockton Dunning Benefits as senior vice president Steve Bohannon of strategy. Prior to launching his . . .

Kevin Seelman.(BROKER MOVES)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] KEVIN SEELMAN also joined Lockton Dunning Benefits as vice president and team lead serving clients in the healthcare industry. Prior to joining Lockton, he held leadership p . . .

David Hinckley.(BROKER MOVES)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DAVID HINCKLEY joined Lockton Dunning Benefits as senior account executive and team lead. Hinckley, who has more than 12 years experience David Hinckley in the insurance and . . .

Willis HRH Captive Management Practice.(BROKER MOVES)
LES BOUGHNER was appointed executive vice president and managing director of the Willis HRH Captive Management Practice, overseeing all captive management and consulting operations in North America . . .

Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC.(BROKER MOVES)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WILLIAM CORRIGAN was appointed chief financial officer of Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC, the unit of Marsh serving the small- to middleWilliam Cerdgan market sector. Corrigan . . .

United States for Marsh.(BROKER MOVES)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SUSAN BLANKENBURG was appointed public entity practice leader for the United States for Marsh. She joined Marsh in 1980 Susan Blankenburg and has specialized in public secto . . .

Quote of the month.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH "We make absolutely no assumptions. When you start making assumptions, you're going down real fast."-ANDREW MCDONALD, CNA INSURANCE CO. QUOTE OF THE MONTH "The insurance markets . . .

Let's talk healtheare reform.(WORKERS' COMP)
Impress your neighbors with your perspicacity on national health reform by drawing on your knowledge of workers' comp. Here are eight pearls of wisdom to impart by the baekyard pool. The workers' . . .

A century of stagnation.(ROGER ON RISK)
It's Grand Theory time. I hold that the 21st century is little different, in real terms, from the second half of the one before it. I believe that nothing new, really revolutionary and new, has come . . .

The race for GRC software.(TECHNOLOGY)
Technology can be a risk management friend or foe. In many eases, when I am writing about technology, I am looking at it as a source of risk. In the last few years, for instance, companies have ha . . .

Searching for eureka moments.(RISK INNOVATION)
A key challenge in driving innovation is getting out of the boxes we live in day to day, and thinking more broadly. We often limit ourselves to the areas with which we are most familiar, our comfort . . .

From fear to faith.(RISK MANAGEMENT)
Remember the last time you wrote an exam? You studied hard, you absorbed all the required information and yet you still suffer those horrible butterflies. You experienced fear. Why? It is the uncert . . .

Frayed obligations: the second part of our three-part series details the gap between the U.S. government's obligation to care fo
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On the night of March 29, 200* Sgt. Pat Hanley of Alpha Company, 4th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, and three fellow soldiers were returning to command outpost Caj . . .

The recasting Of purpose: with hull policies excluding terrorism, carriers have extended their kidnap-and-ransom policies to cov
More than 25 incidents of piracy have been reported in the Gulf of Aden so far this year, and ship owners have raised the issue with Chubb, a major underwriter of kidnap and ransom insurance. In r . . .

Waiting in the shadows: companies with good risks can nail down their current D&O price and capacity with a backup carrier in a
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To hear Peter Taffae tell it, he started to get a hunch a little over a year ago that big changes were coming to companies in the insurance sector. Red flags were beginning . . .

Hitting the bull's eye: the program administration business is thriving and, yes, very competitive for administrators and carrie
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If this year's Target Markets midyear meeting in Baltimore in April was any indication, the territory patrolled by program administrators and their opposite numbers among th . . .

Group health help: health insurance represents the new frontier for group captives, as midsize companies in particular look for
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Group captives, both homogeneous and heterogeneous, have become an accepted risk financing mechanism for property and casualty risk. They have been particularly effective in . . .

Triggering concerns: two years after the Virginia Tech rampage, legislatures are warming to the idea of allowing concealed weapo
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Remembrances of the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, which claimed the lives of 33 people, still provoke frustration, sadness and anger. "If only I had been armed," . . .

Directory: captive/self-insurance.(Directory)
DIRECTORY CAPTIVE/SELF-INSURANCE Below are paid listings of service providers to the captive and self-insurance industry. This guide is not intended to be a complete directory. Service providers the . . .

Upcomming events.(Calendar)
21-24 SIIA Conference The Self-Insurance Institute of America's 29th Annual National Educational Conference and Expo is the world's largest event dedicated exclusively to the self-insurance/altern . . .

Office of National Insurance: money well-spent: it's about time the government appointed an office that had a clue about insuran
There's good news, great news actually, in the Obama administration's new an to create an Office of National Insurance (ONI) within the Dept. of the Treasury. It means that finally, there will be so . . .

Office of National Insurance: just window dressing: a federal insurance office is just the latest Wall Street Pennsylvania Avenu
Tap e most compelling argument for why we don't need an Office of National surance are the operations of the many insurers who manage their risk propriately and who are fulfilling their corporate mi . . .

Reinsurers bloodied but unbowed: reinsurers, holding firm in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, covet liquidity and eye
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Reinsurance executives looking to the beginning of next year can take some satisfaction from a market that, while relatively soft, has not plunged to the depths of previous . . .

Working toward the creation of a federal reinsurance charter: has the time finally come to regulate the reinsurance industry at
The reinsurance industry has long bristled at the yoke of state regulation with its emphasis on consumer protection considered irrelevant to business conducted between sophisticated parties. Yet, no . . .

The cats who (better) know the CAT score.(Analytics/Capital Markets: Aon Benfield)
When it comes to catastrophe analytics, these cats know the score, according to several clients. Aon Benfield Analytics has "superbly developed their inhouse tools," said Jeff McCarty, assistant v . . .

Stepping up and stepping in to fill a void.(Analytics/Capital Markets: Aon Benfield Investment Banking Group)
Together Rob Bredahl and Paul Schultz successfully managed the integration of Benfield Advisory and Aon Capital Markets when Aon Re Global and Benfield merged in November, 2008. It was important tha . . .

The Guys and Gal at Carpenter: an eclectic, talented mix of Artists.(Analytics/Capital Markets: GC Securities Capital Markets Te
"It's the people, as with anything," observed John Nichols, president of Bermuda-based Renaissance Re, of Guy Carpenter's GC Securities Capital Markets Team, a division of MMC Securities Corp. 'q-he . . .

Working the breadth and depth angle.(Analytics/Capital Markets: GC Securities Corp. Finance and M&A Team)
The GC Securities corp. finance and mergers and acquisitions team provides great depth and width of knowledge for its clients. "They take the time to understand your needs," said Locke Burt, CEO of . . .

Guys with quiet firepower.(Analytics/Capital Markets: GC Securities Capital Markets Team)
In the last year, the Guy Carpenter industry loss warranty (ILW) team has been involved in the development, shaping and arrangement of more that 150 ILW contracts. This involved a variety of franchi . . .

Intuition guides team at Guy Carpenter.(Analytics/Capital Markets: Guy Carpenter i-aXs Team)
Sophisticated as Guy Carpenter's i-aXs Web-based platform in sales and product deployment is, one can easily feel comfortable using it, said Chris Sukow, director, ceded reinsurance, at San Antonio, . . .

A broker with top billing.(Property: Todd Billeter)
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Back in February Beazley Group announced it would buy First State Management Group from The Hartford, with a transaction closing date of April 1. In that short span Todd B . . .

The overseas overseer.(Property: Jonathan Clark)
Jonathan "Jake" Clark's greatest attribute as a veteran broker is his extensive, first-hand knowledge of overseas markets. "He has an edge with his first-hand perspective of overseas markets," sai . . .

The hands-on globalist.(Property: Christopher Royse)
For John LaGrassa, New York-based senior vice president and head of reinsurance for Zurich North America, everything in this business comes down to trust. "You get that in Chris." "For me, he migh . . .

Minding the consensus.(Property: Andrew Bossom)
Andrew Bossom uses what one client calls a "brilliant mind" to find common ground for people he is bringing together. "His greatest strength is to find common ground in any situation he's involved w . . .

A priceless broker.(Property: Scott Price)
Scott Price is known as an excellent team builder. Observed Richard Pye, Chicago-based vice president of marine underwriting at CNA who has worked with Price for four years: "Scott's team brings t . . .

The performer.(Property: Alice Underwood)
During 2008, Willis Re came to the aid of a firm grappling with a significant shortfall in its property reinsurance program. As the senior actuary on the team that structured, priced and successfull . . .

A pair of loyal property partners.(Property: Willis Re)
Based on an outstanding knowledge of the markets, Philip Bowie, executive president and managing director for Willis Re Inc. and Vice President Joshua Knapp put on a very good presentation, accordin . . .

Just the Facs: Aon Benfield's global growth.(Facultive Reinsurance: Aon Benfield)
Facultative reinsurance can be a challenge. At its root is the ability of a team of brokers and analysts to fashion a particular, often unique solution to a specific problem rather than negotiate re . . .

Surging no. 3 reinsurance broker challenges Aon Benfield-Guy Carpenter duopoly.(Facultive Reinsurance: Willis Re Team)
Although Willis Re doesn't have the heft in its analytics department that an Aon Benfield or a Guy Carpenter can boast, reinsurers in the market said that Willis shows lots of hustle in this changin . . .

Carpenter revitalized by Collins purchase, management changes.(Facultive Reinsurance: Guy Carperter Team)
Guy Carpenter over the past year, like its competition Aon Global Re, also acquired a competitor, John T. Collins Associates, which had one of the winning Reinsurance Power Broker[TM] facultative te . . .