Articles by Catherine Tapia

Business Disaster Planning

While this article was being written, Southern California was still on fire. Thousands of homes were burned to the ground along with hundreds of thousands of acres of forests. This is one of the key times that the insurance industry …

What Price Workers’ Comp’

As was widely expected, on Feb. 15, California Gov. Gray Davis signed a workers’ comp-related bill, AB 749 (Calderon & Burton), which had passed both the state’s House and Senate on Feb. 4. But while it may seem that AB …

The View from Up There-Insurers Embrace Space Age Technologies

In the summer of 2001, a U.S. District judge in Arkansas ruled against several farmers accused of filing false crop insurance claims totaling approximately $244,000. Key evidence in the lawsuit—filed on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the …

Commercial Auto Agents: Between a Rock and a Hard Market

The cyclical ups and downs of the multisegmented arena referred to collectively as commercial auto are nothing new. Though the years referred to as “soft” and “hard” vary in both length and intensity, the same can be said for virtually …

Too Hot to Handle’

The controversy swirling around the use of credit-based insurance scores in underwriting auto and homeowners policies is one that Insurance Journal has touched upon with increasing frequency during the past few months. But going into 2002, what has happened most …

Putting Parameters on Terror

One month ago, when the insurance industry resigned itself to the fact that there would be no immediate provision of a federal terrorism reinsurance backstop, the reactions of individual states to this reality became a center of focus. By the …

Senate Fails to Act on Federal Terrorism Reinsurance Bill

During the first weeks of December, covering the story of whether or not Congress would pass a federal terrorism reinsurance bill before the end of 2001 was pretty much a waiting game. At the time, most insurance industry representatives involved …

Senate Fails to Act on Federal Terrorism Reinsurance

During the first weeks of December, covering the story of whether or not Congress would pass a federal terrorism reinsurance bill before the year 2001 was out was pretty much a waiting game. At the time, most insurance industry representatives …

In Search of Clarity

It would be impossible to estimate the total number of words, both spoken and written, that have been used to try to express the cultural maelstrom that has resulted from the terrorist attacks on America of Sept. 11. Yet many …

Welcome to the 3rd Annual “Top Ten Stories of the Year”

In what became one of the most significant, traumatic and challenging years in U.S. history, the insurance industry, along with the rest of the nation, has had to come to terms with the terrorist attacks perpetrated against our country on …