Industry News

Captive.com will observe the Thanksgiving holiday Thursday and Friday, and "Captive Wire" will not be sent Thursday, Friday, and Sunday.

The Captive Insurance Companies Association's (CICA) 2020 awards ceremony will be a virtual event taking place at 1 p.m. (EST) on December 2, 2020. The online event will focus on recognizing the recipients of CICA's 2020 Distinguished Service Award and Outstanding Captive Award.

AXA XL's North America Construction insurance business has launched its Construction Ecosystem, an integrated digital platform capable of connecting innovative construction technology providers with AXA XL's contractor clients. The new offering is intended to help contractors monitor and aggregate data to help manage risks on jobsites and across their organizations.

The Federation of European Risk Management Associations (FERMA) has announced the nominees for its COVID-19 Special Award. The award will honor a risk manager who has shown excellence in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

A.M. Best has affirmed the A (Excellent) financial strength rating of American Contractors Insurance Group (ACIG) with a financial size rating of VII ($100 million to $250 million) in capital and surplus. ACIG was the recipient of the Captive Insurance Companies Association's (CICA's) 2019 Outstanding Captive Award.

Commercial insurance premiums continued to increase in the third quarter of 2020, according to the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers' (CIAB) quarterly Commercial Property-Casualty Market Index. Survey respondents reported moderate to significant increases for all account sizes and all commercial lines, including workers compensation.

Rives & Associates, a North Carolina-based firm specializing in accounting, tax, and advisory services, has adopted the new name RH CPAs, PLLC, (RH) to support its growth and recognize an expanded leadership team. RH serves a broad base of clients throughout the United States and international markets.

Alphabet, Inc., is reportedly in the process of sponsoring a $237.5 million captive-sponsored catastrophe bond to cover its California earthquake exposure. A story on the Artemis.bm website explains that Alphabet will use its Hawaii-domiciled captive insurance company, Imi Assurance, Inc., to act as fronting insurer for the risk.

AXA XL Risk Consulting has launched a new globally available risk assessment service, Risk Scanning, to carry out multiperil assessments of companies' physical locations. The new solution combines the expertise of AXA XL risk consultants with data mining capabilities and probabilistic algorithms.

The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has opened registration for its virtual 27th Annual Conference scheduled for December 3–4, 2020. The theme of this year's conference is "Sustainable Insurance: Emerging Risks, Trends, and Opportunities." The conference will include discussions on the insurance protection gap and climate risk management.

Uncertainty and political rhetoric may cloud the US presidential election results, but it is possible to begin assessing how the results may impact captive insurers. In a special bonus episode of the Global Captive Podcast, Richard Cutcher spoke to experts on tax, the investment markets, and legislative activity in Congress.

While global insurance premiums are projected to fall 1.4 percent this year, premium growth is expected to rebound swiftly in 2021 and 2022, supported by continued rate hardening, according to a new report from Swiss Re. The new report estimates that global premium growth will hit 3.4 percent in 2021.

As the world grapples with new spikes of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's important to consider the disruptions such global crises can cause to organizations' supply chains. The COVID-19 pandemic created severe disruptions for many organizations' supply chains, and it's likely that a similarly disruptive event will occur in the future.

Nearly all commercial insurance lines saw year-over-year renewal rate increases again in October, according to the IVANS Index, a regular premium renewal rate index compiled by the IVANS insurance exchange service. Year-over-year, all lines of business except workers compensation saw an increase in average premium renewal rates.

US property-casualty insurers will continue to face new operational and risk management challenges from pandemic-related insurance losses and premium volume declines in 2021, according to Fitch Ratings. Insurers able to manage the challenges of workforce flexibility, limit risk aggregations, and reduce claims exposures will be best positioned, Fitch said.

Global commercial insurance prices increased 20 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2020, according to the Global Insurance Market Index compiled by Marsh. Marsh said the increase was the largest since the index was launched in 2012 and it follows year-over-year average increases of 19 percent in the 2nd quarter.

Lloyd's has launched the 2nd phase of its Future at Lloyd’s strategy with the introduction of Blueprint Two, a 2-year program that aims to bring to life the transformation plans set out in September 2019's Blueprint One. Lloyd's said Blueprint Two will transform the way the market's customers get covered.

The US property-casualty insurance industry's net income dropped 26 percent in the first half of 2020, as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic began to hurt underwriting results and investment gains, according to data analytics firm Verisk and the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

Catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide estimates that insured losses to onshore property resulting from Hurricane Zeta's wind and storm surge will range from $1.5 billion to $3.5 billion. AIR said that at landfall Zeta was a high-end Category 2 storm with 1-minute sustained wind speeds of 110 mph.

Vermont's Department of Financial Regulation has filed a federal suit against a captive insurance executive and financial adviser alleging a multimillion-dollar fraud against policyholders. The suit names the former president of Global Hawk Risk Retention Group and several of Global Hawk's outside professional advisers.