Businesses reduce liability insurance limits. (Up Front).
For the first time in six years, businesses reduced the level of insurance they purchase to protect themselves against catastrophic liability exposures. A new report by New York-based Marsh Inc. finds that companies reduced their liability insurance limits by an average of 6 percent in 2002. According...

Excusing "Late Notice" of Oaims.
Liability insurance policies typically include notice clauses that provide that if a claim is made against a policyholder, the policyholder must "immediately" forward the claim to the insurance company. Some courts view this notice requirement as a condition precedent to coverage. Thus, an insured that fails to meet a...

Captive/self-insurance.
CAPTIVE/SELF-INSURANCE Below are paid listings of service providers in the captive and self-insurance industry. This guide is not intended to be a complete directory. Suppliers themselves have provided this data. To obtain more information on vendors and their services, please select the appropriate URL. For more information, please contact...

Swallowing The Gap.
An excess insurance policy generally is triggered when the limits of the underlying primary policy are exhausted or used up. In most instances, it is quite clear when this occurs. Suppose, for example, that a policyholder has a primary policy providing $1 million in coverage and an excess policy...

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...

Your worst nightmare.
How you can protect yourself against abrupt rescission of your D&O policy. WHEN YOU FIRST agreed to join the board of directors, you were confident that your company had in place the very best D&O liability insurance policy to protect your personal assets. After all, you knew...

Higher Reinsurance Prices.
Primary property/casually and employee benefits insurance rates have been rising substantially over the past year. The rising primary insurance rates have caused many employers to broaden their existing self-insurance programs into more coverages and wider geographic areas, as well as increase their retention levels. Many smaller companies...

Dilbertian exclusions.
Writing insurance humor is a fine art. It's insurance school for four years, and then comedy school for 30 more, before you're any good at it. The underlying problem is that insurance is dull, and humor is funny. So the Insurance Humorists' Local 108 asked me to convey a...

Aircraft Cover.
Aircraft Cover AIG Aviation Inc. has launched its new Fractional Aircraft Ownership Program, an insurance program designed to give coverage to businesses or individuals who make a fractional purchase of an aircraft or lease an aircraft. The pro gram offers four coverages that can be individually priced...