In this edition of CEO Angles, the topic turns to the tremendous changes affecting the Inland Marine insurance market. From supply chain issues and driver shortages to government infrastructure spending, automation, even cryptocurrency, all are putting pressure on inland marine underwriters to respond.

Dr. Matt Hinds-Aldrich, Senior Risk Strategy Lead, was a recent guest on the FNO: InsureTech podcast, joining hosts Rob Beller and Lee Boyd to talk about how new thinking around data can enhance insurers’ ability to measure, rate, and mitigate fire risk and the challenges associated with insuring the peril, particularly in wildfire-prone areas such as California.

Phil Klotzbach, Research Scientist at the Colorado State University, stopped by The AAIS Executive Roundtable with a preview of the upcoming hurricane season in The Florida Report.

Litigation Tops Capital and Nat CAT Concerns

AAIS, a sponsor of the 2022 Florida Insurance Market Summit held March 21st to 23rd, polled attendees pre-event to understand what they perceive as the most pressing issues affecting the Florida market and the overall insurance industry.

Personal lines insurance is more diverse than ever before. During a Personal Lines Product Council in 2022 hosted by AAIS, Member carriers and other key stakeholders discussed several key issues affecting the market, from cryptocurrency and solar panels to container homes, “swimply”, and e-bikes and scooters.

AAIS established Product Advisory Councils to bring Member carriers and other industry stakeholders together to identify the burgeoning issues concerning insurers and the broader insurance industry today. While not all issues raised can be solved through product or program developments, we believe discussing emerging issues as well as working together within the AAIS Community can spawn new ideas and usher resources to meet today’s challenges. A general overview of several emerging issues is discussed below.

Dr. Phil Klotzbach, Ph. D., from the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, says climate change is real. In a recent interview he explained that “if you go back to the late 1800s, parts-per-million of carbon dioxide was about 280; now we're sitting at about 420. We've gone up by about 50 percent of what we were about 140 years ago. With that, we've seen a global temperature rise of about eight- or nine-tenths of a degree Celsius … about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Regulation plays an outsized role in the development of the auto insurance sector. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have seen an even higher than usual impact from wild fluctuations in rates, claims, premiums, and consumer reimbursements, to activities impacting the industry itself.

The AAIS Pulse newsmagazine recently featured an in-depth discussion with Woody Bradford, CEO and Chair of Conning, one of the leading global investment management firms serving the insurance industry. He chatted with AAIS CEO Ed Kelly on the investment environment for insurance companies, inflation, cryptocurrency, investment strategies, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and much more.

Dr. Matt Hinds-Aldrich, Senior Risk Strategy Lead at AAIS and fire peril subject matter expert, recently joined Tom Louis from First Due to discuss why the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) still matters and why it needs to improve to meets the needs of the 21^st century fire service. Watch the entire discussion here:

On Wednesday, Jan. 19, AAIS hosted a webinar with AAIS VP of Data Solutions Ruturaj Waghmode and BizDynamics SVP of Partnerships Neil Pravin Dias. They took a comprehensive look at what the power of data democratization means for insurance carriers, regulators, agents, and policyholders – and how to make it a reality.