Risk & Insurance articles from March 2005

Risk & Insurance archives from March 2005

W.'s red herring.
March 1, 2005... The heart of the Social Security issue revolves around the concept of insurance. Social security is an insurance program, not an investment program. And, as with any insurance policy, success depends upon underwriting, pricing and the...

Joseph Mangan.(Editor's Note)
March 1, 2005... Longtime Risk & Insurance[R] columnist Joseph F. Mangan, CPCU, died late last year after a long illness. Joe, an insurance executive, editor, educator and insurance journalist wrote a column on property risks. In this edition, on page 16,...

Ann Deering.(Editor's Note)
March 1, 2005... Contributing editor Ann Deering died late last year after a long illness. Ann's writing career came to her later in life, after she spent a career developing space and satellite underwriting products and policies at the broker Johnson &...

Willis expands, buys U.K. units.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... Insurance broker Willis Group has bought CR King and Partners Ltd. a Northampton, England-based insurance broker with $2.5 million in revenues, Willis has announced. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Mellon-Fiserv join forces.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... Mellon Financial Corp.'s Human Resources & Investor Solutions unit and the health unit of Fiserv Inc. will provide health savings account products and services through Fiserv Health's subsidiary, the firms have announced. These administrators,...

CHOICE Medical picks director.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... Barbara Dolson has become the new director of account services for CHOICE Medical Management Services LLC, the company has announced. Previously, Dolson oversaw sales for the company, which provides care management services to the workers'...

AIR updates hurricane CAT model.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... AIR Worldwide Corp. has incorporated Florida's recently mandated annual hurricane deductible into its catastrophe modeling system, AIR has announced. The new data means that AIR can analyze the impact of the deductible changes on insurer...

GAB Robins expands bandwidth.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... Virtela, a networking company, has announced that GAB Robins, a claims services firm, is using Virtela's networking services to connect more than 300 branch offices and 1,000 mobile employees worldwide. The implementation spans all 50 states...

Workers unfamiliar with health accounts.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... Most U.S. workers have neither heard of health savings accounts nor understand how they work, according to a new survey by Watson Wyatt Worldwide. After receiving an explanation of health services accounts, a majority of individuals liked...

Group buys ACE runoff units.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... Randall & Quilter Investment Holdings Ltd. has announced the acquisition of three companies forming part of ACE Ltd.'s Brandywine runoff division. The three companies being acquired are ACE American Reinsurance Co. in the United States, and...

Tort costs reach a record in 2003.(News & Notes)
March 1, 2005... U.S. tort costs reached a record $246 billion in 2003, or approximately $845 per person, according to a study by Tillinghast. Even though this represents a 5.4 percent increase in tort costs from 2002, it's a much slower growth rate than in...

A breakout year for consumer health plans? Providing consumers with good data remains a challenge for health insurers.(Up front: news, updates and other emerging strategies from around the world)
March 1, 2005... In 2005, any of the 20,000 U.S. employees of publisher Reed Elsevier Inc. are eligible to participate in the company's new consumer-directed health plan based on the health savings account. By offering the benefit, Reed Elsevier has put...

Buyer, seller lobbies far apart over bid-rigging scandal: reactions to AG's investigations like night and day.(Up front: news, updates and other emerging strategies from around the world)
March 1, 2005... Reactions to the investigations of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer into bid rigging by Marsh Inc. show just how far apart insurance buyer trade lobbies stand from insurance broker trade groups. Trade groups like the Risk and...

Man sues "Fear Factor" after getting sick--isn't that the point? Paralegal sues for $25 million after he claims the NBC show made him ill.(Up front: news, updates and other emerging strategies from around the world)
March 1, 2005... It was bound to happen eventually. A viewer watching an especially disgusting episode of "Fear Factor" has sued NBC for $2.5 million because it made him sick. The handwritten suit, filed in Cleveland by a paralegal, complains that he threw up...

Ex-exec: Spitzer probe splits rims brass into two camps: leadership paralyzed in face of tumult.(Up front: news, updates and other emerging strategies from around the world)
March 1, 2005... New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's much-ballyhooed investigation of the broker-company-risk management relationship failed to arouse deep concern among leaders in the risk management community, according to a former executive director of...

Small, remote siblings laugh last.(Alternative Risk)
March 1, 2005... In the late 1950s, lawyer Bill Kempe amused his fellow Bermudians at a Rotary luncheon by forecasting that Bermuda would one day become "the Switzerland of the Atlantic." At the time, Bermuda was not much more than a fishing village. The idea...

Moving in opposite directions.(Workers' Comp)
March 1, 2005... Last November, I spent six days in workers' comp conferences where I engaged in dozens of conversations and attended scores of product demonstrations. I woke up bleary-eyed on the last day with this disquieting notion. The missing information...

Back to basics.(Property)
March 1, 2005... Editor's note: Longtime Risk & Insurance[R] columnist Joseph F. Mangan died Nov. 4, 2004. Over the years, he had built a loyal following of readers thanks to prescient and insightful commentary about a subject close to his heart: property...

Walking the plank: Bermuda leaders, looking to put their stamp on a unified nation, push for independence. Critics claim the governing Progressive Labour Party is committing political suicide. Neither voters nor big business support independence. One CEO says his firm is ready to move to Ireland should unfavorable political winds buffet his corporation.(Cover Story)
March 1, 2005... Bermuda Premier Alexander Scott is hoping to persuade his countrymen to seek independence from Great Britain. His opponents argue this will be expensive and ultimately destabilize the colony. Naysayers forecast outright doom. Why would anyone...

Doctors on retainer catch on: a new model driven by doctors dissatisfied with traditional managed care catches on with the few who can afford it. Not surprisingly, the model has begun to attract closer regulatory scrutiny.(Benefits)
March 1, 2005... What would it be worth to you, if you never had to wait for an appointment with your doctor or sit around in the waiting room? What would it be worth if you received exhaustive preventive care year in and year out? How much would you pay if you...

The high price of misconduct: financial services firms are settling record fines with regulators and this is helping to make directors and officers liability insurance very hard to find at a reasonable price. Buyers will eventually be stuck with higher rates and more restrictions.(Compliance)
March 1, 2005... In recent years there has been a proliferation of lawsuits and administrative proceedings involving financial institutions. Some involve alleged misconduct of financial institutions, such as the allocation of IPO shares to favorite clients,...

Diving into a crushing occupational divide.(Insurance)
March 1, 2005... Fishermen along the Miskito coast of Nicaragua and Honduras catch about half their lobster harvest from diving, and descend to depths of 100 feet or more. Thousands of miles away, Maine fishermen say their greatest occupational risk is wear and...

Hedge funds hog the spotlight: although hedge funds played little role in the reinsurance market five years ago, they now reportedly account for as much as half of the capital available for some specific forms of coverage, such as protection against a single storm.(Special report: alternative risk)
March 1, 2005... Hedge funds have started writing reinsurance coverage. Where once reinsurance companies invested in hedge funds, now hedge funds are investing in catastrophe insurance. Much of this activity is taking place in Bermuda. For a decade, hedge...

Be careful what you wish for: consumer-driven health plans may slow the rate of health care inflation, according to proponents. But the technological billing challenges associated with these plans are so complex that they threaten to erase any pricing gains.(Technology)
March 1, 2005... In the complex and tedious world that is health care billing, those who pay the bulk of the bills--insurance carriers and health plans--have always had their hands full managing bill payment to physicians practices and hospitals of all sizes...

Slicing through the silos: about 18 months ago SBC Communications hired Paul Stephens to unite the risk management functions around the far-flung corporation, and to increase control at the managerial level. Stephens' group united investments, including pensions and savings, with all risk management, including corporate risk financing, workers' compensation, and claims.(Profile)
March 1, 2005... Despite being called Baby Bells from their inception, the telecommunications companies created from the breakup of AT&T retained several major hallmarks of a hidebound, old-economy sector that includes a large capital-heavy infrastructures and...

Supply chain threats fray fragile threads: making garments abroad slashes the price of labor, to the delight of shareholders. But the gains are sometimes easily erased with a snafu or two in the supply chain, leaving managers entangled in big headaches.(Industry risk report: the apparel industry)
March 1, 2005... Every day, managers in the U.S. apparel industry take a leap of faith. They order thousands of garments and accessories worth millions of dollars from factories in Asia and Central America, with the hope that the items will arrive in the United...

Technology directory.(Directory)
March 1, 2005... Below are paid listings of specialty software packages for insurance companies. This guide is not intended to be a complete directory but is an overview of some of the packages available. The software suppliers provided the data. To obtain more...