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☆ How an Insurer Helps a Shipper Stay Above Water
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Leslie Scism | Photographs Christopher Gregory-Rivera For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-an-insurer-helps-a-shipper-stay-above-water-2a1d51c3

Persons: Dow Jones

☆ State Farm Halts Home-Insurance Sales in California
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-27 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-farm-halts-home-insurance-sales-in-california-5748c771

☆ Paperwork Screw-Ups by Employers Deny Families Life-Insurance Payouts
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/paperwork-screw-ups-by-employers-deny-families-life-insurance-payouts-ac403380

☆ Car Insurance Rates Are Going Up Again
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The rate increase comes amid inflation, higher claims costs and rising prices for auto parts, insurers say. Photo: patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesAllstate and Progressive , two of the nation’s biggest car insurers, say inflation continues to hurt their auto-insurance businesses, and are pushing ahead with additional premium-rate increases for vehicle owners. The two giants, and many other big car insurers, say higher claims costs continue to dent their results, despite slowing inflation. Prices continue to rise for auto parts, they say, and vehicles are taking longer to be repaired than in past years due to shortages of workers. Those delays, in turn, lead to extended rental-car use by policyholders, at the insurers’ expense.

☆ Wall Street’s New Trade: Covid-19 Insurance Claims
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Juliet Chung | Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-streets-new-trade-covid-19-insurance-claims-fc4e191c

☆ How Life Insurance Agents Beat Back a Tech Onslaught
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-life-insurance-agents-beat-back-a-tech-onslaught-6943ee30

☆ Office Building Owners Snubbed by Life Insurance Lenders
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Leslie Scism | Peter Grant | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Many insurance firms have become skittish about rising vacancy rates and falling rents in the office market. Life insurance companies, until recently a reliable source of capital for commercial property developers, are turning their backs on office building owners as tens of billions of dollars in office loans come due this year. Many of these insurers have slowed or stopped making office loans, executives and analysts say, interrupting the sector’s decadelong expansion into commercial property lending. Insurance firms have become skittish about rising vacancy rates and falling rents, reflecting the growing popularity of remote work and return-to-office rates that are still around half the levels workplaces enjoyed prepandemic.

☆ Life Insurance Is Profitable Again, but Too Late for Many Insurers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Allstate’s exit from the life-insurance business came amid shareholder concern over low returns, the company’s chief executive says. The past 15 years has been a lousy time to sell life insurance. Higher interest rates driven by the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting campaign have given the industry a new chance to profit. But many of the big U.S. publicly traded insurers will miss the party.

☆ Citizens Financial Unit Investigated for Sales of Savings Product Controlled by Troubled Financier Greg Lindberg
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Mark Maremont | Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Citizens Financial has 1,200 branches, mostly in the Northeast. Massachusetts securities regulators said they are investigating a unit of Citizens Financial Group Inc. over its sales of a savings product offered by an insurer controlled by now-indicted financier Greg Lindberg . News of the probe follows an article published this week in The Wall Street Journal, which reported that tens of thousands of people, many of them retirees, had a total of $2.2 billion of their money frozen since 2019 amid the implosion of Mr. Lindberg’s insurance empire.

☆ Thousands of Retirees Can’t Withdraw Savings Invested in Firms Controlled by Indicted Financier Greg Lindberg
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Mark Maremont | Leslie Scism | Photographs Christopher Capozziello For The Wall Street Journal | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Mark Zintel, a retiree who lives near Tampa, Fla., is furious that $700,000 in annuities he bought from an insurer have been frozen for almost four years. He is one of tens of thousands of people whose money was rendered unreachable as the empire of self-described billionaire Greg Lindberg slowly imploded.

☆ Insurer Chubb Demands Energy Producers Cut Methane Emissions for Coverage
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Leslie Scism | Rhiannon Hoyle | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Oil-and-gas companies will provide plans to manage emissions or lose underwriting from Chubb. Global insurer Chubb Ltd. is tightening its requirements on insurance policies for oil-and- gas producers, demanding that they reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Chubb , which is a top-10 insurer in the worldwide oil-and-gas market by premium volume, will also stop underwriting projects in areas designated as protected by state, provincial or national governments, effective immediately.

☆ Regulators Look at Potential Bias in Life-Insurance Algorithms
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Northwestern Mutual wants half of the life-insurance policies it issues by year-end to be automated. State regulators are pushing back on U.S. life insurers’ use of data science to speed up cumbersome application processes, citing concerns that artificial intelligence could unfairly discriminate against minorities. Colorado’s Division of Insurance has begun crafting regulations under a new state law restricting insurers’ use of algorithms, predictive models and the information fed into them in a far-reaching effort closely watched by the industry.

☆ Life Insurers Boosted Premiums, Now They Are Paying Refunds
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Approximately 43,000 refund checks totaling $69 million were issued in recent weeks to Voya Financial policyholders. When interest rates fell to near zero after the financial crisis, dozens of life insurers boosted costs for longtime policyholders, seeking to improve results as their investment income fell. Now they are giving partial refunds to tens of thousands of these customers to settle a wave of lawsuits spurred by the increases. Raising rates on people who bought their policies years in the past had historically been taboo. But facing potential losses, many U.S. insurers scoured the contractual language of their policies to identify ways to raise the amounts billed to customers.

☆ AIG Margins Improve but Earnings Hit by Weak Markets and Bad Weather
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Insurer American Insurance Group had some of the best underwriting performance in its history although net income fell. American International Group Inc. had improved profit margins in its core property-casualty unit and rising sales of some products, which were offset by volatile markets and severe winter weather that hurt results in some other areas. AIG , one of the biggest insurers by premium volume of businesses worldwide, had some of its best underwriting performance in history, continuing the company’s multiyear turnaround. The unit showed improvement in a key profitability metric that measures how much of each premium dollar is sent out the door in claims and related costs. For the full-year, AIG held those costs to below 90 cents, a long-held goal.

☆ Private Equity Taps Insurers’ Cash to Speed Up Growth
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Matt Wirz | Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

New York-based Apollo Global Management merged with an annuity insurer that now accounts for almost half of the $523 billion Apollo manages. Investment firms that play on the cutting edge of finance are turning to one of the oldest businesses on Wall Street to turbocharge their growth: insurance. Private-credit fund managers such as Blackstone Inc., Carlyle Group Inc. and Centerbridge Partners are increasingly forming partnerships with insurers, or buying them outright. Call it the merger of slow money and fast money.

☆ Companies Fight Back Against Premium Increases for Crucial Insurance
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Leslie Scism | Alice Uribe | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-fight-back-against-premium-increases-for-crucial-insurance-11674684529

☆ Stock Selloff Hits Life Insurers’ Fastest-Growing Product
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The hottest thing in life insurance for more than a decade might be cooling off. A long-running stock-market rally and low interest rates combined to create the perfect conditions for indexed universal-life policies. Sales of these policies rose from 4% of life-insurance sales in 2008, as measured by new annualized premiums, to 28% in the third quarter, according to industry-funded research firm Limra.

☆ Top Executive For Financier Greg Lindberg Pleads Guilty to Charges Related to Insurance Fraud
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Mark Maremont | Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Greg Lindberg, who is being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud, also faces bribery charges in North Carolina. A former top lieutenant of North Carolina insurance mogul Greg Lindberg agreed to plead guilty to a federal criminal conspiracy charge. The plea is the latest episode in prosecutors’ pursuit of Mr. Lindberg and his associates, a saga that has had many twists. The guilty plea indicates that prosecutors are continuing with their investigation and could be seeking a second indictment of Mr. Lindberg.

☆ Top Executive for Financier Greg Lindberg Pleads Guilty to Charges Related to Insurance Fraud
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Mark Maremont | Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Florida Lawmakers Approve Property-Insurance Overhaul, Sending Bill to DeSantis
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Leslie Scism | Arian Campo-Flores | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Florida’s average annual home-insurance premium of $4,231 is the highest in the nation, and nearly triple the nationwide average, says trade group Insurance Information Institute. Florida lawmakers approved sweeping changes to state law to address a worsening property-insurance crisis, including adding $1 billion to a state-run reinsurance program to ease a burgeoning private-sector shortage of the crucial backup coverage. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called the legislature into a special session this week to deal with woes that also include a highly litigious environment in the state, mounting losses at smaller insurers constituting the bulk of the home-insurance market, and the ballooning size of a state-run insurer of last resort as some private-sector carriers have been driven to insolvency.

Florida lawmakers are set to begin a special legislative session Monday to address the state’s deepening property-insurance crisis, which is raising premiums for homeowners, driving some carriers to insolvency and threatening to stifle the housing market. Among the issues the Republican-led legislature plans to address are a highly litigious environment in Florida, the availability of reinsurance—backup coverage insurers buy—and the ballooning size of the state’s insurer of last resort, according to a proposed bill released late Friday.

☆ Life-Insurance Payouts Hit Record $100 Billion in 2021
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

An installation in Washington, D.C., commemorated Americans who died from Covid-19. U.S. life insurers paid a record $100 billion in 2021 in death benefits, fueled by another year of Covid-19 deaths, an industry trade group said. Payouts rose 11% in 2021 to $100.19 billion, most likely due to the pandemic, according to the American Council of Life Insurers. The increase was on the heels of a 15% year-over-year rise in 2020, when death-benefit payments totaled $90.43 billion.

☆ Insurers Are Facing a Steep Rise in Reinsurance Rates
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Hurricane Ian is estimated to cost insurers from $40 billion to more than $70 billion. Hurricane season is nearly over, though one more storm is potentially heading for Florida. For insurers, the worries won’t end on Nov. 30. Insurers are in the middle of negotiations with reinsurers, which are trying to boost rates by 10% to 30%. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. property-catastrophe coverage renews each Jan. 1, including for many large diversified U.S. and European insurers.

☆ Prudential Suffers Big Loss on Rising Rates
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Rising interest rates and volatile stock markets battered insurer Prudential Financial Inc. in the third quarter, while American International Group Inc. was stung by claims from Hurricane Ian in Florida, the companies said. The two big insurers faced different challenges in the difficult quarter. Prudential’s so-called adjusted operating income slid 46% to $803 million from $1.49 billion, and it swung to a loss of $284 million on a net basis, from net of $1.53 billion in the year-earlier period.

☆ Hurricane Ian Claims Hit Profits of Chubb
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Leslie Scism | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A restaurant in Daytona Beach Shores, Fla., damaged by Hurricane Ian, which is projected to become the nation’s second-costliest natural disaster to property insurers. Chubb posted a 56% decline in net income in the third quarter, as Hurricane Ian claims in Florida dented results, while strong pricing conditions continued to buoy its worldwide business-insurance operations. Chubb, one of the world’s biggest insurers by market capitalization and premium volume, said its premium growth continued to exceed the impact of inflation and other higher costs of claims.

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