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Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent or uncertain loss.
Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd, commonly known as Swiss Re, is a reinsurance company based in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the world's largest reinsurer, as measured by net premiums written. Swiss Re operates through offices in more than 25 countries and was ranked 118th in Forbes Global 2000 leading companies list in 2016. It was also ranked 313th on the Fortune Global 500 in 2015.
Reinsurance is insurance that an insurance company purchases from another insurance company to insulate itself from the risk of a major claims event. With reinsurance, the company passes on ("cedes") some part of its own insurance liabilities to the other insurance company. The company that purchases the reinsurance policy is called a "ceding company" or "cedent" or "cedant" under most arrangements. The company issuing the reinsurance policy is referred to as the "reinsurer". In the classic case, reinsurance allows insurance companies to remain solvent after major claims events, such as major disasters like hurricanes and wildfires. In addition to its basic role in risk management, reinsurance is sometimes used to reduce the ceding company's capital requirements, or for tax mitigation or other purposes.
Munich Re Group or Munich Reinsurance Company is a German multinational insurance company based in Munich, Germany. It is one of the world's leading reinsurers. ERGO, a Munich Re subsidiary, is the Group's primary insurance arm. Munich Re's shares are listed on all German stock exchanges and on the Xetra electronic trading system. Munich Re is included in the DAX index at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Euro Stoxx 50, and other indices.
General insurance or non-life insurance policy, including automobile and homeowners policies, provide payments depending on the loss from a particular financial event. General insurance is typically defined as any insurance that is not determined to be life insurance. It is called property and casualty insurance in the United States and Canada and non-life insurance in Continental Europe.
Catastrophe modeling is the process of using computer-assisted calculations to estimate the losses that could be sustained due to a catastrophic event such as a hurricane or earthquake. Cat modeling is especially applicable to analyzing risks in the insurance industry and is at the confluence of actuarial science, engineering, meteorology, and seismology.
A 501(c) organization is a nonprofit organization in the federal law of the United States according to Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c) and is one of over 29 types of nonprofit organizations exempt from some federal income taxes. Sections 503 through 505 set out the requirements for obtaining such exemptions. Many states refer to Section 501(c) for definitions of organizations exempt from state taxation as well. 501(c) organizations can receive unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, and unions.
A “Risk pool” is a form of risk management that is mostly practiced by insurance companies, which come together to form a pool to provide protection to insurance companies against catastrophic risks such as floods or earthquakes. The term is also used to describe the pooling of similar risks within the concept of insurance. It is basically like multiple insurance companies coming together to form one. While risk pooling is necessary for insurance to work, not all risks can be effectively pooled in a voluntary insurance bracket unless there is a subsidy available to encourage participation.
The liability insurance crisis in the United States of America refers to a volatile economic period during the mid-1980s. During these years, until about 1990, rising insurance premiums and an unavailability of coverage for several types of liability insurance led to a crisis that has been attributed, among others, to the expansion of tort doctrines for insurer liability and the McCarran-Ferguson exemption from antitrust laws.
The Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS) is a non-profit organization with membership open to persons interested in the promotion and development of the professional liability industry.
ProAssurance Corporation, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is a property and casualty company that sells professional liability insurance to doctors. The company was founded in 1976 as Mutual Assurance and was later renamed to Medical Assurance in 1997. The name "ProAssurance" was created in 2001 when Medical Assurance merged with Professionals Group. The company is currently the fourth largest medical professional liability insurance writer and has over $6 billion in assets.
Insurance in the United States refers to the market for risk in the United States, the world's largest insurance market by premium volume. According to Swiss Re, of the $6.287 trillion of global direct premiums written worldwide in 2020, $2.530 trillion (40.3%) were written in the United States.
Insurance-linked securities (ILS) are broadly defined as financial instruments whose values are driven by insurance loss events. Those such instruments that are linked to property losses due to natural catastrophes represent a unique asset class, the return from which is uncorrelated with that of the general financial market.
A risk retention group (RRG) in business economics is an alternative risk transfer entity created by the federal Liability Risk Retention Act (LRRA). RRGs must form as liability insurance companies under the laws of at least one state—its charter state or domicile. The policyholders of the RRG are also its owners and membership must be limited to organizations or persons engaged in similar businesses or activities, thus being exposed to the same types of liability. Most RRGs are regulated as captive insurance companies. However, RRGs domiciled in states without captive law are regulated as traditional insurance companies.
Captive insurance is an alternative to self-insurance in which a parent group or groups create a licensed insurance company to provide coverage for itself. The main purpose of doing so is to avoid using traditional commercial insurance companies, which have volatile pricing and may not meet the specific needs of the company. By creating their own insurance company, the parent company can reduce their costs, insure difficult risks, have direct access to reinsurance markets, and increase cash flow. When a company creates a captive they are indirectly able to evaluate the risks of subsidiaries, write policies, set premiums and ultimately either return unused funds in the form of profits, or invest them for future claim payouts. Captive insurance companies sometimes insure the risks of the group's customers. This is an alternative form of risk management that is becoming a more practical and popular means through which companies can protect themselves financially while having more control over how they are insured.
W. Brown & Associates (WBAIS) is an independently owned Wholesale Insurance Broker and Managing General Agent (MGA), headquartered in Irvine California. Founded by a group led by William Brown in 1987, the company's initial market was Aviation insurance, however over time W. Brown & Associates expanded into the adjacent Property and Casualty insurance market in addition to its aviation insurance products.
Regarding insurance in the United States, on July 21, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the federal Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank"), which contains the Nonadmitted and Reinsurance Reform Act of 2010 ("NRRA"). The NRRA applies to nonadmitted insurance, which includes surplus line insurance and directly-procured insurance, and to reinsurance. The NRRA took effect on July 21, 2011 and generally provides that the placement of nonadmitted insurance will be subject solely to the statutory and regulatory requirements of an insured's home state, and that no state, other than an insured's home state, may require a surplus lines broker to be licensed to sell, solicit, or negotiate nonadmitted insurance with respect to the insured. While the NRRA preempts state laws with respect to nonadmitted insurance, it does not have any impact on insurance offered by insurers licensed or authorized in a state.
Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd, or Argo Group, is a Bermuda-based international underwriter of specialty insurance products in the property and casualty market. Argo Group and its insurance subsidiaries are rated "A-" by Standard & Poor's. Argo's insurance subsidiaries are rated "A-" by AM Best. In 2017, the San Antonio Express News wrote that "The company has made more than $1 billion in profit over the last decade as a mid-sized player in a niche field insuring complex or hard-to-price risks other insurers won’t touch." Argo was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2018.
Covéa is a French mutual insurance company that covers property, liability and reinsurance businesses headquartered in Paris. It was formed from the merger of three separate French mutual insurance companies Garantie Mutuelle des Fonctionnaires (GMF), Mutuelle d'assurance des artisans de France (MAAF) and Mutuelle du Mans Assurance (MMA).
Pamela Ellen Davis is the founder, President and CEO of the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance (NIA), a group of 501(c)(3) nonprofit insurance cooperatives that provide liability insurance to more than 21,000 nonprofit organizations in the United States. In addition to her nonprofit insurance work, she is a public policy advocate and nonprofit thought leader who has spearheaded legislative change at both the California state and Federal level and overseen projects to increase nonprofits' access to credit and improve the financial expertise of the nonprofit sector.
References
- ↑ "2021 Annual Report" (PDF). Nonprofits Insurance Alliance.
- ↑ Lawrence A. Berger; J. David Cummins; Sharon Tennyson (1992). "Reinsurance and the liability insurance crisis". Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 5 (3): 253–272. doi:10.1007/BF00057882. S2CID 154715481.
- ↑ "Mission & History". Nonprofits Insurance Alliance.