My first response to this was that it was another Spitzer level attack on the industry for political gain. After reading the depth of this article, there may be merit in this instance. Can’t wait to see where this leads.
Can we please create a new branch of government, dedicated to being a police department to bring ego-maniac stupid garbage politicians to justice?
We just had a judge throw out all these class action suits about retail brokers and their alleged co-conspirators, yet now some idiot headline-grubbing uneducated backwater politician still gets his headline fame for this stunt?
Trust me, pal… the insurance industry isn’t smart enough to pull this off. If we were, insurance and reinsurace underwriting profits would be two digit numbers, which they historically are not! If reinsurance was so profitable, then capital, surplus, and availability wouldn’t be worries. Instead, reinsurers regularly take huge worldwide capital, lose the money in underwriting losses, and then run off next cycle trying to find new money from silly people that think investing their capital in the insurance industry is gonna be really cool. Strangely enough… reinsurers find new people willing to lose their money every cycle.
If you want to find conspiracy, look to an industry or segment that makes money, greater than just investing your capital in the stock market, on a consistent basis. Sorry… insurance is the wrong selection. Insurance manages to lose money on underwriting, but then make up their losses on financial, where in the net they do just a little worse than just taking the original capital and buying a mutual fund (if you average the returns fairly, on a 5-year basis).
Hmm… maybe you should investigate to see if there is anyone out there that always invests in insurance industry stocks ONLY in the years where they have huge growth! Now THAT would be a clever bunch. …and if they’re that clever, some silly politician isn’t going to be the one smart enough to catch them at it.
Yes… these guys are really beginning to annoy me….
You know, as soft as this market is right now, I only WISH it we true that a re broker could drive up prices.
I see the real price contraints as:
1) ebb and flow of capital. Seems to me it is flowing into the biz right now.
2) the number of trained underwriters available to review and quote submissions (balanced by the proliferation of Expert Systems, which are presently designed for small, homogeneous risks). We seem to be running out of these folks due to the depletion of the Training budgets over the last 15 years.
3) Losses. Loss ratios are looking pretty good right now.
Sorry, Mr. AG, but due to ease of entry our business is not so easily manipulated, at least for very long. Maybe you should stalk some Knights Templar conspiracy.
I’m now wondering if the re-insurance market in Mass. is guilty of this anti-trust behavior, causing the standard market to leave Cape Cod. Are we to believe the Cape is a “high risk” area when Barnstable County is one of 2 of the highest profit-making counties in the state?
Sould our AG’s office be looking into this matter? I say yes.
My first response to this was that it was another Spitzer level attack on the industry for political gain. After reading the depth of this article, there may be merit in this instance. Can’t wait to see where this leads.
Can we please create a new branch of government, dedicated to being a police department to bring ego-maniac stupid garbage politicians to justice?
We just had a judge throw out all these class action suits about retail brokers and their alleged co-conspirators, yet now some idiot headline-grubbing uneducated backwater politician still gets his headline fame for this stunt?
Trust me, pal… the insurance industry isn’t smart enough to pull this off. If we were, insurance and reinsurace underwriting profits would be two digit numbers, which they historically are not! If reinsurance was so profitable, then capital, surplus, and availability wouldn’t be worries. Instead, reinsurers regularly take huge worldwide capital, lose the money in underwriting losses, and then run off next cycle trying to find new money from silly people that think investing their capital in the insurance industry is gonna be really cool. Strangely enough… reinsurers find new people willing to lose their money every cycle.
If you want to find conspiracy, look to an industry or segment that makes money, greater than just investing your capital in the stock market, on a consistent basis. Sorry… insurance is the wrong selection. Insurance manages to lose money on underwriting, but then make up their losses on financial, where in the net they do just a little worse than just taking the original capital and buying a mutual fund (if you average the returns fairly, on a 5-year basis).
Hmm… maybe you should investigate to see if there is anyone out there that always invests in insurance industry stocks ONLY in the years where they have huge growth! Now THAT would be a clever bunch. …and if they’re that clever, some silly politician isn’t going to be the one smart enough to catch them at it.
Yes… these guys are really beginning to annoy me….
You know, as soft as this market is right now, I only WISH it we true that a re broker could drive up prices.
I see the real price contraints as:
1) ebb and flow of capital. Seems to me it is flowing into the biz right now.
2) the number of trained underwriters available to review and quote submissions (balanced by the proliferation of Expert Systems, which are presently designed for small, homogeneous risks). We seem to be running out of these folks due to the depletion of the Training budgets over the last 15 years.
3) Losses. Loss ratios are looking pretty good right now.
Sorry, Mr. AG, but due to ease of entry our business is not so easily manipulated, at least for very long. Maybe you should stalk some Knights Templar conspiracy.
I’m now wondering if the re-insurance market in Mass. is guilty of this anti-trust behavior, causing the standard market to leave Cape Cod. Are we to believe the Cape is a “high risk” area when Barnstable County is one of 2 of the highest profit-making counties in the state?
Sould our AG’s office be looking into this matter? I say yes.