Morgan’s mess

JPMorgan’s $2B trading loss is pretty big news, but some other big news, if you are interested in ERM, came early in the conference call. (You’ll have to sign up to listen.) “We’d shown average VaR at $67″ million for the chief investment office, CEO Jamie Dimon said. “it will now be $129″ million. (Educational [...]

MarketScout: Rates up 3%

That’s a touch better than 2% last month. More here. The Dallas insurance exchange also notes that rates in the non-admitted market are trending up. Usually in a hard market, admitted insurers abandon the non-admitted market, which is where the hard-to-write risks reside. That action allows non-admitted rates to accelerate.

Me me me

Contingencies publishes my article on rate monitors.

The Week in a Minute, April 30, 2012

Well, 2½ weeks . . . Insurance Information Institute, ISO and PCI pegged the 2011 combined ratio at 108.2, the highest since 2001, hurt by catastrophes and weak results on lines like workers comp. Return on average surplus was 3.5%, down from 6.6% a year earlier. Capacity-challenged Florida’s Citizens Property Insurance plans to issue (via [...]

Math problems

This is from a study guide my fourth-grade daughter received:   The calculation error gives the teacher the right answer, instead of 1/24. Normally, I give stuff like this a pass, since anyone can make a mistake. But this particular teacher is a math specialist, and it’s the second time a study guide has had [...]

Insuring the Titanic

With the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking today, there’s a great post at Willis’ blog regarding the ship’s insurance placement: The rate was 15 shillings per cent (0.75%), costing White Star Line £7,500 to insure each vessel. Today’s rates for a comparable risk would be significantly lower. More interesting, is the surprisingly high deductible [...]

The Week in a Minute, April 13, 2012

Lots of travel = not much blogging. More signs of a tightening market: Willis marketplace update finds higher rates in North American property and casualty (while noting that $100 of risk in 2007 sells for $70 today – details here); Marsh reports property rates rising worldwide. Worldwide reinsurer capital fell 3% last year, Aon Benfield [...]

The Week in a Minute, April 6, 2012

Rates up 3% last month, according to MarketScout, following increases of 2% in February and 1% in January. And Guy Carpenter said rates rose on reinsurance renewals at April 1, a big renewal date in the Asian markets, so any increases would be exacerbated by the brutal 2011 that region suffered. $1.2B in March cat [...]

The Week in a Minute, March 30, 2012

So March was in like a lion lamb, out like a veal cutlet drizzled in olive oil with a rosemary seasoning: Insurance Insider (via SNL – firewalled) provides the latest in the Whither Rates? soap opera, with details on the renewal of Chubb Insurance’s purchase of cat cover. Chubb’s cover was loss free last year, [...]

The private market can’t solve the nation’s health care problem.

Well, that’s a provocative headline. Is it true? It’s today fashionable to think the Supreme Court will rule that the feds can’t force a person to buy health insurance (or broccoli – and I like broccoli). There are some interesting takeaways: