One of today’s biggest insurance trends is green insurance as businesses look at ways to become more sustainable and cut costs. According to underwriters, the regulatory environment for green is changing dramatically as well. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is requiring publicly traded businesses now disclose their climate risks and what they’re doing about climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates greenhouse gas as a pollutant and is putting new and tougher restrictions on nearly all industries.
Some cities have adopted green building codes requiring that buildings be rebuilt as green. Some jurisdictions, including California, will soon require that office buildings, hotels and buildings that are for sale or lease must disclose their energy star score. These new green building regulations, as well as the actual task of going green, can be overwhelming for a business owner. Insurance companies and agents can work with them to help ease the process and make sure their green exposures are covered.
In this edition of Markets in Motion, MyNewMarkets.com Associate Editor Amy O’Connor talks with Fireman’s Fund about how agents can help insureds with the going green process and with a business owner who has successfully made the transition to a green business.
John Norwood, principal of Norwood & Associates, has a career in political work dating back to the early 1980s, and he’s one of the state’s best known lobbyists in the insurance and financial services sectors. Norwood talked about workers’ compensation, and other legislation and regulation matters that the insurance industry will face in 2012, including [...]
John, principal of Norwood & Associates, has been an lobbyist for insurance and financial services sectors across several decades. Norwood offered a focused looking at the all-important workers’ compensation issue, and he gave his thoughts on health insurance exchanges. In fact, Norwood forecast that 2012 will rank as an important one when it comes to [...]
John Norwood is one of California’s best known legislative advocates for the insurance and financial services sectors. Norwood spoke to the Insurance Journal about legislation and regulation, including a proposal by a consumer advocacy group that would establish prior approval for healthcare insurance and would make major changes to auto insurance and homeowners insurance in [...]
This year the Entrepreneurial Insurance Alliance (EIA), sponsored by MarketScout, named Vertafore and Risk Metrics, as winners of it 2011 Entrepreneurial Award in technology. Vertafore’s WorkSmart and Risk Metrics’ Insurance 360 technology products received recognition from the EIA as being some of the industry’s most innovative concepts in technology. Each year, the EIA receives hundreds [...]
Retail and wholesale brokers face the challenge —and opportunity— of redefining their relationships and value proposition in today’s changing insurance distribution world, according to Glenn Hargrove, president, MarketScout Wholesale, Dallas, Tex. In this interview from the recent Western Insurance Agents Association’s Insurance Industry Roundtable in California, Hargrove outlines the value proposition of agents and brokers [...]
The medical liability market continues to perform well even as the nation struggles to implement health care reform. Robert Allen, senior vice presidents at Torus Insurance, says many health care institutions are implementing new strategies to be successful in today’s health care reform world. In this interview with Insurance Journal’s Andrea Ortega-Wells from the annual [...]
As concerns over the Spitzer probes fade, the pace of insurance broker mergers is accelerating,
Bill Clinton has some trouble during a speech when a man finds his voodoo doll.
Amateur camcorder footage of the 2004 tsunami disaster. Shot from inside a quickly-flooding