SYNOPSIS ALL INDUSTRY CONFERENCE CALL July 25, 2012

 

If there is a subject you would like to see addressed on Wednesday, August 1, please email Loretta Worters at lorettaw@iii.org

 

In his testimony on Tuesday, July 24, I.I.I. President Bob Hartwig focused on U.S. insurer contributions to the economy. The I.I.I. issued this same-day media advisory on the session, which included a presentation by Charles Chamness, president and CEO of the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC).

I.I.I. senior vice president Jeanne Salvatore delivered a PowerPoint presentation to the National Policy Institute on Emergency Planning and Preparation on Sunday, July 22, and while in New Orleans met with a number of reporters and editors at the Times-Picayune, including Mark Schlefstein, an environmental reporter (Phone: 504-826-3327), who has covered hurricanes in the past and is also on Twitter. The T-P’s consumer reporter, Jacquetta White, is leaving the paper to work for another media outlet in Nashville. Gordon Russell will be the top editor responsible for the internal reorganization of T-P editorial assignments, although Schleftstein says he will remain on the environment beat. It is unclear if Becky Mowbray will still be covering insurance and banking. The Time-Picayune’s plan is for the paper to reemerge as a multimedia Web organization. They are building a state-of-the-art TV studio on Canal Street and equipping reporters with cameras and radio broadcast technologies through iPads and iPhones. All T-P reporters will receive training in the new technology. Reporters will be reporting/posting on news 24-hours a day and the paper’s print edition will simply run popular Web articles. Mark believes sports will dominate the paper’s printed coverage. He also noted advertisers have already purchased space on the new website and predicts it will be a profitable venture. This new format may provide media opportunities for the I.I.I. as they will need a lot of content and will be interested in conducting Skype and radio interviews. Salvatore spoke with all four of the editors responsible for the re-organization at the paper. They have added the I.I.I. to its new internal database of contacts.

The top writers of crop insurance will be able to absorb any near-term crop losses from the current drought in the Midwest, according to this Fitch Ratings analysis, released on Wednesday, July 18. Fitch said these insurers are likely to maintain current levels of financial strength “due to the primary writers’ size, diverse portfolios, conservative use of additional reinsurance, and business line’s historical profitability.”

The New York Times published an editorial in its Wednesday, July 25, print edition saying that crop insurance “should be able to protect farmers against losses, not guarantee profits, especially for the bigger farms that command a disproportionate amount of the taxpayers money, and certainly not to guarantee the good life for the [crop] insurance companies.”

 

Reuters posted a story on Wednesday, July 25, reporting that 85 percent of the acres upon which all U.S. corn is planted are insured in 2012, whereas only 75 percent of the entire U.S. corn crop was covered a decade ago.

Conning Research released a study, The Big Payout: Growing Individual Retirement Income Opportunities, on Thursday, July 19, which notes that insurers need to respond to the competition posed by mutual funds in helping Americans accumulate retirement assets, and turn those monies into a secure income stream.

Half of all Americans today report that their retirement savings efforts have been insufficient, compared with 38 percent who believed that was the case when assessing their portfolio in 1997. Meanwhile, 34 percent of those responding to a Consumer Federation of America and Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards survey believe they can retire at 65, compared with 50 percent who said that 15 years ago, according to this Tuesday, July 24, USA Today article. 

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance posted on Tuesday, July 24, its Check Up on Your Home Insurance article, which appears in the magazine’s August 2012 edition. The I.I.I. is cited throughout the piece, with the I.I.I.’s Know Your Stuff – Home Inventory software getting a mention as well.

 

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has designated the I.I.I. as one of its Campaign Safety Leaders because of the I.I.I.’s promotional efforts surrounding Pool Safely Awareness Week (July 22-29, 2012). 

 

With the 2012 Summer Olympics about to start in London, the I.I.I. is widely circulating Olympics and insurance-related facts and statistics via social media as well as content on travel insurance, special event insurance and terrorism risk insurance.

The I.I.I.’s Elianne González has been invited by the Miami Dade County’s Consumer Advocate Office to talk about the insurance issues a small business needs to consider when it first opens. González will be addressing a county-sponsored workshop on this topic Thursday, August 23.

 

Anna Maria Andriotis of Smart Money will likely mention credit-based insurance scoring when her 10 Things You Don’t Know About Credit article is posted online….Sharon Epperson of CNBC is hearing rumors about companies who may no longer sell term life insurance policies because of the prolonged low-interest rate environment….Dan Robbins, a Dallas-based Associated Press reporter (phone: 972-677-2231, email: drobbins@ap.org) is almost finished writing a piece about the aftermath of Cover-All Building Systems’ 2010 bankruptcy. Cover-All, whose assets have since been purchased by Norseman Structures, Inc., manufactured steel-framed, fabric-covered buildings, which subsequently gained a reputation for being poorly designed and unable to withstand heavy winds. The most infamous example of a Cover-All building collapsing while under stress occurred in May 2009 at a Dallas Cowboys training facility. The incident left two people severely injured….Hasan Dudar, a reporter for Bloomberg News in Detroit (Phone: 248-827-2960, email: hdudar@bloomberg.net) has been working with the Insurance Institute of Michigan to see if he can quantify a link between Detroit’s crime rate and the price the city’s businesses (e.g., gas stations, grocery stores) pay for commercial property insurance.

 

Julie Rochman, president and CEO of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) was among those who testified at a Tuesday, July 24, Congressional subcommittee hearing on the merits of the Safe Building Code Incentive Act (House Resolution 2069).

 

Should House Resolution 5859 be enacted into law, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will no longer be required to produce an annual Relative Collision Cost Information booklet, and distribute it to new vehicle dealers nationwide so that prospective car purchasers can assess comparative insurance costs based on a vehicle’s damage susceptibility and crashworthiness, according to this Monday, July 23, article in The Hill.

 

The Citizens Property Insurance Corporation board of governors is convening on Friday, July 27, at 9 a.m. in Miami to vote on what is expected to be a rate hike averaging 7.5 percent for its 1.4 million policyholders statewide.

The Tampa Bay Times published on Sunday, July 15, an interview with Robin Westcott, Esq., Florida’s insurance consumer advocate. Budget cuts have reduced her full-time staff to six people whereas the office previously had anywhere from 15 to 20 employees, Westcott said.

 

Consumer Watchdog issued a news release on Monday, July 23, to tout the reactivation of a website it created in opposition to Proposition 33, a ballot initiative regarding auto insurance pricing that Californians will vote on in November 2012.

 

The California Earthquake Authority (CEA) is about to issue catastrophe bonds that would “sustain principal losses if CEA’s claims-related losses exceed $6.23 billion,” according to this Friday, July 20, Bloomberg article. The story is pegged to a Monday, July 16, Standard & Poor’s report on the CEA’s planned bond issuances.

 

A California Workers’ Compensation Institute (CWCI) review of data released by the state’s Office of Self-Insurance Plans found that, in 2011 as compared to 2010, medical-only workers compensation claims edged down slightly while lost-time claim frequency registered a marginal increase. The CWCI summarized its findings in this news release on Thursday, July 19.

 

Cal Fire expects to generate millions in dollars in new state revenue after collecting $150 each from more than 700,000 California homeowners whose properties fall within areas where Cal Fire has firefighting responsibilities, according to a Monday, July 22, article in The Press-Enterprise.

Regions Bank delivered $104 million to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office from the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation’s account on Monday, July 23, according to a next-day story in the Baton Rouge Advocate. The monies will be disbursed later this year to 18,573 Citizens policyholders whose 2005 hurricane-related insurance claims were mishandled. Ed Anderson reports in the Wednesday, July 25, Times-Picayune that each Citizens policyholder impacted by this case could see a check totaling anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000.

The Baton Rouge Advocate will expand its newspapers’ coverage area to include New Orleans in the fall of 2012, when the Times-Picayune reduces the number of print editions they produce to three from seven days, according to this Tuesday, July 24, story.

 

Alabama Department of Insurance employees, and those at a number of other state agencies, were unable to gain access to their offices at the Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) Tower, the tallest building in Montgomery, after an electrical fire prompted its closure on both Thursday, July 19, and Friday, July 20. This Alabama Media Group article offered details.

FEMA has awarded a $2.7 million grant to Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources to help the state improve its floodplain mapping program, according to a story in the Wednesday, July 25 edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

 

FEMA announced on Monday, July 23, that federal aid has been made available to the state of West Virginia to supplement local recovery efforts in the counties affected by the severe storms and straight line winds that hit the state between Friday, June 29 and Sunday, July 1.

A century-old, 48-inch water main broke in South Philadelphia on Sunday evening, July 22, and led to extensive water damage in a densely-populated neighborhood, according to a next-day story, which aired on WCAU-TV, Philadelphia’s NBC affiliate. The Philadelphia Inquirer assessed the insurance implications of the incident on Tuesday, July 24.

 

FEMA representatives toured communities such as Brownville, Milo and Patten, on Monday, July 23, to assess the damage incurred from heavy rains and flooding last month, and determine whether the affected municipalities were eligible for federal assistance, according to this same-day Bangor Daily News article.

 

Paul Bomberger has joined Business Insurance as its managing editor. Bomberger, a former editor-in-chief at Risk & Insurance magazine, succeeds Matthew Scroggins, who is now a senior editor at Aon Risk Solutions.

 

Newsweek magazine may discontinue its hard-copy print edition later this year.

 

WWL’s Bob DelGiorno, who has been a radio personality for 30-plus years in New Orleans, is retiring.

 

Pool safety is a popular topic this week with Facebook pages and Twitter feeds of insurance companies and safety education organizations sharing tips and warnings about to do and not do around swimming pools. Lightning safety also continues to pop up as well. 

 

The biggest topic appearing in social media this week is the importance of having flood insurance. Twitter feeds and blog posts from financial planning and educational groups, including Money magazine, are discussing how inexpensive flood insurance can be in many places and the fact the coverage is essential. The I.I.I.’s Loretta Worters is quoted in a popular article on the subject that is being circulated.  

 

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