Latest Market Headlines

All the headlines from our Market Topic Page, ordered by recency.

Louisiana’s Homeowners Market Stronger 9 Years after Katrina

Sep 8 2014 // Louisiana’s property insurance market is vastly improved nine years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the state on Aug. 29, 2005, largely due to the implementation of statewide building codes and strategies that...

MAPFRE Enters Mass. Life Insurance Market

Sep 8 2014 // MAPFRE U.S.A. has begun selling a term life insurance product in Massachusetts, where MAPFRE’s subsidiary, Commerce Insurance, is the largest auto and home insurance carrier. MAPFRE said it is seeking to leverage its...

Nationwide Eyes Growth in New Jersey Auto Insurance Market

Aug 29 2014 // Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company has begun selling its Nationwide-branded auto insurance in New Jersey this month for the first time since 1981. “So we’ve been writing business now for about two weeks and so...

Louisiana’s Homeowners Market Stronger 9 Years after Katrina

Aug 29 2014 // Louisiana’s property insurance market is vastly improved nine years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the state on Aug. 29, 2005, largely due to the implementation of statewide building codes and strategies that...

MAPFRE Enters Life Insurance Market in Massachusetts

Aug 27 2014 // MAPFRE U.S.A. said it has begun selling a term life insurance product in Massachusetts, where MAPFRE’s affiliate Commerce Insurance Company is the largest auto and home insurance carrier. MAPFRE said it is seeking to...

Willis Energy Market Review: Still Soft Market; OIL ups Occurence Limits

Aug 22 2014 // Willis Group Holdings August Energy Market Review (EMR) highlights the decision by Oil Insurance Limited (OIL) to increase its per occurrence limit from $300 million to $400 million and the event aggregation limit from...

Florida Opens, Closes Surplus Lines Opportunities

Aug 20 2014 // The recent legislative session in Tallahassee was relatively quiet, a matter some attribute to this being an election year. But even in quiet years, Florida lawmakers tend to make some noise about the insurance industry...

InVEST Insurance Education Program Adopted by Chicago High Schools

Aug 19 2014 // InVEST, the insurance industry’s classroom to career education program, announced that all Chicago Public School Career and Technical Education (CTE) finance programs will now offer its curriculum to seniors. The...

Young Agents Rate Flexibility, Career Growth Over Technology: Vertafore Survey

Aug 14 2014 // Technology is not an incentive when it comes to attracting and retaining millennials to the insurance industry but it can provide overall job satisfaction in terms of flexibility and career growth opportunities, according...

Everyone Likes a Hard Insurance Market, Right?

Aug 13 2014 // What’s the big deal with a hard property/casualty insurance market? Everyone likes one, said Art Davis, president of Colony Specialty, a member of the Argo Group. “You make a lot of money, have good...

Fitch Raises Italy Insurance Market Outlook as 1st Half Betters Expectations

Aug 12 2014 // Fitch Ratings has revised its outlook to stable from negative, reflecting expectations that insurers’ profit and capital adequacy will be resilient amid the Italian recession. The outlook also reflects reduced credit...

European Insurance Industry Figures Find ‘Stability & Growth’ from 2003-2012

Aug 8 2014 // Despite the economic upheavals the European insurance industry has maintained a path of stability and growth, even through times of crisis, according to figures released by Insurance Europe, the European insurance and...

Focusing on Disaster Costs Before Rather Than After They Happen

Aug 6 2014 // The United States spends a lot of money responding to natural disasters but comparatively little trying to limit the costs of disasters before they happen. As the costs to the government and the insurance industry mount,...

Insurance Industry Hurricane Tour of Texas Coast to Begin Aug. 18

Aug 4 2014 // The insurance industry wants Texas coastal residents to know about hurricane preparedness and insurance coverage for future hurricanes. The information is offered by a contingent of catastrophic weather experts recruited...

Hartwig Turns Back King Hammurabi’s Playbook on Resilience

Aug 4 2014 // The U.S. government may be starting to embrace concepts that date back to Babylonian King Hammurabi’s reign 3,800 years ago. When President Barack Obama on July 16 issued climate change initiatives on guarding the...

Hartwig Turns Back King Hammurabi’s Playbook on Resilience

Jul 24 2014 // The U.S. government today may be starting to embrace concepts that date back to Babylonian King Hammurabi’s reign some 3,800 years ago. When President Barack Obama on July 16 issued a set of climate change...

Q1 P/C Direct Premium Written Up 3.5 Percent

Jul 21 2014 // Direct premium written (DPW) for property/casualty insurance companies continues to increase, albeit gradually. At year-end 2013, nearly $545 billion of DPW was reported, a record high for the industry. For 2013, total DPW...

McCafferty to Become CEO of UK’s Flood Re: ABI

Jul 18 2014 // A bulletin from the Association of British Insurers announces that “Brendan McCafferty has been appointed CEO of Flood Re, after a selection process run by the Flood Re directors and senior representatives from the...

Senate Passes TRIA Renewal with Broker Licensing Provision

Jul 17 2014 // In a 93-4 vote, the Senate today passed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2014 (S. 2244 ) that extends the federal reinsurance program for seven years. In addition to extending the Terrorism Risk...

Fitch Forecasts Shrinking P/C Insurer Profits

Jul 17 2014 // Fitch Ratings is forecasting that 2014 will end up as the second consecutive year of underwriting profits for the property/casualty industry with modest increase in the combined ratio. But the results for 2014 won’t...