By GC Capital Ideas.com Despite an ever-changing terrorism risk insurance market, businesses from every industry sector continue to purchase coverage - more than 60 percent of organizations surveyed by Marsh bought coverage in 2009. This report provides a snapshot of the major issues and trends surrounding terrorism insurance in 2010. Key issues and findings include: An Overview of the Terrorism Risk...

By Carrie E. Cope, Shareholder, Schuyler Roche & Crisham, P.C. At one point or another, the availability of insurance has a substantial, and sometimes dramatic, impact on our lives. At the consumer level, it can mean the affordability of life-saving surgery or the accessibility of a home mortgage. In the business world, the availability of affordable insurance can similarly significantly affect business owners...

By Allison Bell, Senior Editor/Web Editor, National Underwriter Life & Health The U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) has set up a Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act comment submission process. The SEC has posted a list of Dodd-Frank act comment submission form links , and it also has posted a separate request for comment on the standard of care that brokers, dealers and investment...

By SNR Denton On July 21, 2010, after several weeks of deliberations in the Senate and the House of Representatives, President Obama signed HR 4173, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Of greatest importance to risk managers and their brokers, HR 4173: (1) creates the Federal Insurance Office within the Treasury Department; and (2) implements the Nonadmitted and Reinsurance Reform...

By SNR Denton On July 21, 2010, after several weeks of deliberations in the Senate and the House of Representatives, President Obama signed HR 4173, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Of most importance to life insurers, HR 4173 does not alter the current state-based insurance regulatory scheme. However, it: (1) creates the Federal Insurance Office within the Treasury Department;...

By SNR Denton On July 21, 2010, after several weeks of deliberations in the Senate and the House of Representatives, President Obama signed HR 4173, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Of most importance to surplus line insurers and reinsurers, HR 4173 does not alter the current state-based insurance regulatory scheme. However, it: (1) creates the Federal Insurance Office within the Treasury...

By Jeffrey Weinstein, Partner, Mound Cotton Wollan and Greengrass On July 15, 2010, the House of Representatives passed legislation that extends the National Flood Insurance Program (“NFIP”) and contains changes designed to provide additional certainty to the program. But, this good news was tempered somewhat by a proposed amendment to the legislation that has generated significant criticism from insurers...

By Erica Villanueva, Associate, Farella Braun + Martel In Clarendon America Insurance Company v. North American Capacity Insurance Company , E048176, 4th Dist. Ct. App. (Super. Ct. No. CIVRS701868), a new California Court of Appeal decision, the Fourth Appellate District has rejected an insurer’s attempt to apply multiple self-insured retentions to a single lawsuit. Clarendon America Insurance Company...

By Ronald D. Kent, Partner, SNR Denton Butler v. First Acceptance Insurance Co., 652 F. Supp. 2d 1264 (N.D. Ga. 2009), concerns an insurer’s duty to settle. Butler received what his lawyer regarded as an inadequate response to a time-limit demand for the $25,000 policy limit, obtained a $3.25 million consent judgment and an assignment of the insured’s rights, and brought the bad faith action. He sought...

By Sherilyn Pastor, Partner and Practice Group Leader, McCarter & English, LLP On July 12, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Am. Equity Inv. Life Ins. Co. v. SEC, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 14249 (D.C. Cir. July 12, 2010) struck a blow to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) attempts to classify fixed index annuity products (“FIAs”) as...

By Randy Maniloff, Partner, White and Williams LLP Garden State Maintains its Duty to Depend Standard. What do New Jersey’s duty to defend and favorite son have in common? They both did it their way. * * * New Jersey’s duty to defend is unique. That’s for certain. I’ve recently presented a New Jersey duty to defend seminar for several clients and am starting to run out...

By Allison Bell, SENIOR EDITOR/WEB EDITOR, National Underwriter Life & Health Federal agencies are using temporary regulations to implement the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008. An older parity act, the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, has required plans that offer mental health benefits to use the same total lifetime and annual benefits limits...

By Allison Bell, SENIOR EDITOR/WEB EDITOR, National Underwriter Life & Health Insurance regulators are trying to figure out ways to take more types of risk into account when looking at insurance company investment portfolios. An arm of the Invested Assets Working Group at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Kansas City, Mo.. – the Risk Other Than Credit Technical Subgroup – has...

By Carol A. Weiser, Jamey A. Medlin, and Vanessa A. Scott, Attorneys, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP On June 22, 2010, the tri-agency task force 1 charged with drafting regulations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) released interim final regulations regarding PPACA’s rules on preexisting condition exclusions, lifetime and annual limits on benefits, rescissions, and patient protections...

By Rene Siemens, Partner, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP For decades, insurers have denied coverage for the costs of investigating and cleaning up radioactive contamination. Insurers insist that such costs are excluded from coverage. Their position took a body-blow recently when a Massachusetts federal judge ruled that the standard "pollution exclusion" in a insured's nuclear liability insurance...

Late last week, the House and Senate drafters of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 4173) came to final compromise on the language creating the first ever office in the federal government that is focused on the insurance industry called the Federal Insurance Office (the "FIO"), housed in the United States Department of the Treasury. The FIO will gather information regarding the...

New Hampshire Governor John Lynch (D) signed HB 660 into law which enacted life settlement legislation in New Hampshire effective June 14, 2010 (the "Act"). The Act is primarily based on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' model, and, among other things, imposes restrictions with respect to stranger-originated life insurance transactions ("STOLI"). The Act defines STOLI, in pertinent...

By Robert O'Connor, Editor, A.M. Best Company Insurers involved in the U.K. pensions market are reacting with caution to the new U.K. government's call for a simpler, more stable pension system, as some believe constructive reform is easier to talk about than to implement. Paul Goodwin, head of pensions at Aviva plc, said calls for simplicity in pensions are made on a regular basis in the United Kingdom...

By John L. Watkins, Shareholder, Chorey, Taylor & Feil Last week, courtesy of my friends at LEXIS, I attended the HB Litigation Conference in Atlanta on litigation and insurance coverage issues arising from the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The presenters included extremely well-known plaintiffs' attorneys (including the guys you see on CNN and MSNBC). Presenters also included well-known and...

ATLANTA - The Gulf of Mexico oil spill could result in some "interesting and creative lawyering" in the insurance arena, an attorney on a four-member panel said June 25 on the last day of HB Litigation Conferences ' Oil in the Gulf: Litigation & Insurance Coverage Conference here. Policyholder counsel Selena J. Linde of Perkins Coie LLP and Kali N. Bracey of Jenner & Block LLP, both in Washington...

ATLANTA - The use of dispersants on oil leaking from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig could create a toxic stew of byproducts, and past oil spills are of little help in predicting what damage could be done to the Gulf of Mexico, speakers said today at HB Litigation Conferences' Oil in the Gulf: Litigation & Insurance Coverage Conference here. Dispersants are used to break down oil into smaller droplets ...

ATLANTA - The $20 billion BP escrow fund to compensate victims of the Gulf oil spill will cover all claims against the company except for environmental cleanup and could eventually grow much larger, Michael K. Rozen of Feinberg Rozen said today at HB Litigation Conferences' Oil in the Gulf: Litigation & Insurance Coverage Conference here. Rozen is the partner of Washington, D.C., attorney Kenneth R...

By Erica Villanueva, Associate, Farella Braun + Martel Employment Practices Liability ("EPL") insurers have been aggressive in denying coverage for "wage and hour" class actions filed in California and elsewhere. Indeed, insureds now frequently assume that their policies afford no coverage for such claims. Depending on the particular statutory violations alleged, however, such class actions often...

By Amanda Hairston, Associate, Farella Braun + Martel In what appears to be the first published California decision on the issue, the Second District Court of Appeal recently held that a carrier must defend its insured when the claim may not be covered by the primary policy and “potentially” falls within the carrier’s umbrella coverage. In Legacy Vulcan Corp. v. Los Angeles County Superior Court...

By Joe Whalen, Insurance and Risk Management Consultant, Farella Braun + Martel How much of a typical large property claim (property, builders risk, business interruption, and extra expense losses in excess of $5,000,000) actually gets paid by insurance, and how long does it take to settle a large claim with an insurance company? After 20 years of consulting on a variety of large property losses, I have my own ideas...