Upcoming events.
APRIL 20-22 AAIS Main Event The American Association of Insurance Services will host its 2008 "Main Event," featuring sessions and group discussions focused on product-related issues of strategic importance to company CEOs. This year's event will be held at the Ponte Vedra Inn...

Colony's Latham: Cycles and Surplus Lines.
As markets harden, excess and surplus lines get a fresh look, and Colony Group CEO John Latham--who also heads the trade association NAPSLO--knows the ups and downs of the business as few others do. January renewals tell the tale. For the first time in years, property and...

The E&S market softens up: the E&S market is softening, but a consensus as to whether it's gone soft is lacking. The biggest profits are expected to come from property-catastrophe areas.
The overall property/casualty insurance market has been showing signs of softening, but insiders in the excess and surplus lines market are cautiously optimistic about the state of the industry for 2007. In 2005, the surplus lines market remained fairly stable, despite the decline of the bull market...

Getting it done: in the current hard market--which isn't expected to end anytime soon--the excess and surplus lines industry believes it's doing some of its "best work". (Excess & Surplus).
Insurance market prospects looked rosy for risk managers in January 2001. A panel of insurance industry analysts and chief executive officers at the Property and Casualty Joint Industry Forum predicted an abbreviated cycle. The hard market, they forecasted, would not last beyond the second quarter of 2001. The consensus...

Gallagher Bassett case grinds on: is the company being mean to school children, or being abused by a Catholic diocese?
A legal battle between a Roman Catholic diocese in Western Pennsylvania and a third-party administrator headquartered outside of Chicago is entering its fifth year. The argument has ground on to the point that Itasca, Ill.-based Gallagher Bassett Services Inc., a division of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.,...

The vendor's endorsement. (The Law).
When a manufacturer produces a defective product that it sells to a distributor, the distributor ordinarily is merely a conduit in the stream of commerce that ends at the ultimate consumer. Nevertheless, the distributor, in that role, may be held liable for an injured user. The nonculpable...

Bermuda front-runners. (Bermuda Angle).
Of the dozen large companies formed in Bermuda after 9/11, four have emerged as front-runners. The 2001 market leaders are Arch, AWAC, AXIS and Endurance. Each was started with $1 billion or more and is pursuing a different market niche. Of the four, AXIS Specialty keeps the...

Hard lessons: buyers of excess and surplus catastrophe property insurance were getting used to the relative comfort of softening trends, at least through the first half of 2005. But last year's hurricane season stiffened prices and abruptly hardened the marketplace, jolting prices out of their slumber.
The brutal 2005 hurricane season, which by some estimates caused more than $60 billion in property damage, is expected to raise property rates in the excess and surplus lines market by at least 20 percent in 2006, analysts and insurance industry executives say. That's good news for...

Introducing Peachtree Special Risk of Florida Excess and Surplus Lines Insurance Brokerage.
LAKE MARY, Fla., March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Peachtree Special Risk (PSR) is pleased to announce the opening of their second office in Lake Mary, Florida effective January 3, 2001. The Florida office will focus on surplus lines brokerage of commercial property and casualty insurance. PSR Florida will...

Stuckey and Company Adds Century Insurance Group as Premier Surplus Lines Commercial Insurance Carrier.
LAKE ST. LOUIS, Mo., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Stuckey & Company, a specialty insurance program manager with over 8,000 independent insurance agents, announces the addition of Century Insurance Group to their list of carriers. Century, rated A - (Excellent) by A.M. Best, primarily writes excess and surplus lines general...