Latest Trends Headlines

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

Extreme Rainfall Could Cost South Asian Cities Up to $215B Annually by 2030

Oct 20 2017 // As global attention focused on hurricanes Harvey and Irma, more than 41 million people across South Asia battled floods and displacement. From Afghanistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east, floods could cost South Asia...

Delaware Announces Workers’ Compensation Rate Decrease

Oct 19 2017 // Delaware Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro has announced that there will be a decrease in workers’ compensation insurance rates, effective December 1, 2017. “This insurance rate decrease has a direct...

Records Show Unprecedented Increase in Firearm Thefts in Kansas City

Oct 18 2017 // Police records show there has been an unprecedented spike in gun thefts in Kansas City, Missouri. The number of annual firearms thefts sharply increased between 2015 and 2016, according to police data obtained by the...

Experts: Forget Government, Companies Must Step up to Combat Cyber Threats

Oct 17 2017 // Don’t rely on the U.S. government to protect your business from cyber threats. That was the consensus among experts speaking about cyber programs at a risk management conference on Tuesday. “The U.S. government...

Freelance Workforce Keeps Growing, Increasingly by Choice

Oct 17 2017 // Freelancing is growing. The freelance workforce grew from 53 million in 2014 to 55 million in 2016 and currently represents 35 percent of the U.S. workforce. This freelance workforce earned an estimated $1 trillion this...

U.S. Homeowners’ Premiums Grow Despite Insurers’ Decreasing Return on Equity: Aon Benfield

Oct 17 2017 // When this year’s results are tallied, direct U.S. homeowners’ insurance premiums will have continued to grow, despite a decreasing return on equity for insurers. According to Aon Benfield’s annual...

Kansas Workers’ Comp Rates to Decrease in 2018

Oct 16 2017 // Kansas Commissioner of Insurance Ken Selzer announced that workers’ compensation insurance rates on average will drop in his state in 2018. The National Council on Compensations Insurance Inc. (NCCI) filing for the...

Gov. Brown Signs Bill that Could Energize Insurance Markets

Oct 16 2017 // Given the far-reaching nature of some of the bills that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in recent weeks, it’s no surprise that a relatively minor tweak to the insurance code didn’t muscle its way onto the...

Idaho Workers’ Comp Rates to Decrease for 2018

Oct 16 2017 // The Idaho Department of Insurance has received a proposal from the National Council on Compensation Insurance for an overall rate drop of 5.8 percent percent to workers’ compensation insurance. The decrease is to...

Cincinnati Financial Corp. Says Q3 Cat Losses Could Rise to $114M

Oct 13 2017 // Cincinnati Financial Corp. has announced that the Cincinnati Insurance Companies’ property/casualty group expects its third-quarter results to include pretax catastrophe losses of approximately $102 million to $114...

Lloyd’s Outlook Is Negative on Hurricane Losses; Ratings Affirmed: S&P

Oct 13 2017 // S&P Global Ratings has revised its outlook on the Society of Lloyd’s to negative from stable, while reaffirming the market’s ‘A+’ insurer financial strength and long-term counterparty credit...

Losses from California Wildfires Could Reach up to $6 Billion, Experts Say

Oct 12 2017 // This story has been updated with the latest estimates on fire losses. The wildfires raging in California are shaping up to become an infamous if not historic event. The fires have destroyed 3,500 structures and counting,...

Insurers, Tech Firms ‘Must Work Together’ to Tackle Emerging Technology Risks

Oct 12 2017 // The World Economic Forum is bringing insurers, tech firms and governments together to find ways to tackle risks from new technology such as drones and driverless cars, it said on Thursday. Tech firms have moved fast to...

Future of Drone Industry Clouded by Panel’s Failure to Agree on Security

Oct 11 2017 // A panel of industry and law enforcement officials couldn’t agree on how civilian drones should be tracked by authorities, adding uncertainty to the push for expanded commercial uses. The advisory committee,...

10 Critical Job Skills of the Future

Oct 10 2017 // The world sits on the precipice of the fourth industrial revolution, as a coming wave of disruptive technology in fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning, the mobile internet and 3-D printing remake entire...

Zurich Insurance ‘On Track’ to Cut $1.5B in Costs by 2019: News Report

Oct 9 2017 // Zurich Insurance will have cut costs by $700 million by the end of the year, nearly halfway to its goal to save $1.5 billion by 2019, Chief Executive Mario Greco said in an interview published on...

A.M. Best Revises Outlook to Positive for Insurance Company of the West

Oct 6 2017 // A.M. Best has revised the outlooks to positive from stable and affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings of “a-” of Insurance Company of the West and its...

Head of Texas’ Harvey Recovery Effort Says Agents Need to ‘Step Up’ on Damage Claims

Oct 6 2017 // The insurance industry in Texas is not happy with the state’s so-called Hurricane Harvey recovery czar. Texas A&M University Chancellor John Sharp, who was named by Gov. Greg Abbott to lead the Commission to...

Q3 2017 Likely to Be One of Costliest for Natural Disasters: Aon Report

Oct 6 2017 // The third quarter of 2017 is likely to break a new record as one of the costliest quarters for natural catastrophes, according to Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development team. “The...

Future Reports to Include Both Private, Public Flood Insurance Loss Estimates

Oct 6 2017 // Beginning with Hurricane Harvey, the private sector Property Claim Services will publish aggregate flood loss information supplied by the federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Historically,...