Tag Archives: insurance

With less than a month’s notice major insurance companies drop churches from coverage

Important Takeaways:

  • Major insurance companies drop churches from coverage as natural disasters become more frequent: ‘This does not make sense’
  • Due to a perfect storm of climate-related factors, stress has arrived at some ministry doors, leaving people concerned about the financial future of those churches.
  • The Baptist Paper reported that an “ongoing wave of disasters,” including hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, are combining with ballooning construction costs to send insurance companies into a panic.
  • As a result, church insurers have begun dropping “high-risk” churches — or charging exorbitant price increases — to recoup their losses.
  • Insurers are feeling the pressure in places like Texas, California, and Louisiana, all of which have seen an increase in extreme climate-related weather. Now, churches in those areas are scrambling to assess whether they can afford to continue paying insurance — or operating at all.
  • Without insurance, churches may not be able to function as community resources, serving vulnerable people from all walks of life.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Top Secret military Vets refused government aid because there’s no record they worked at that base

Vets-denied-insurance

Important Takeaways:

  • Vets who served at top-secret Area 52 suffering from serious illnesses and can’t get health insurance
  • Air Force veterans who served at top-secret nuclear testing site Area 52 in Nevada say they are being denied health care after their time at the base left them riddled with tumors and other ailments.
  • Mark Ely, 63, said he is grappling with a litany of health problems from his assignment 40 years ago inspecting secretly obtained Soviet fighter jets stored in hidden hangars at the Tonopah Test Range, also known as Area 52, CBS News reported.
  • “It scarred my lungs. I got cysts on my liver. … I started having lipomas, tumors inside my body I had to remove. My lining in my bladder was shed,” he told CBS.
  • Even though a 1975 federal environmental assessment confirmed the presence of toxic radioactive material at the site, Ely said he is unable to get health coverage because his time at Area 52 — which he spent under an NDA — is not on his official service record.
  • In the 1975 report, the government reasoned that stopping work at Area 52 was “against the national interest” and that the ultimate “costs … are small and reasonable for the benefits received.”
  • “There’s a slogan that people say: ‘Deny, deny until you die.’ Kind of true here,” Ely said.
  • He has spent eight years looking for other veterans who worked at the site, and told CBS he came across “all kinds of cancers.”
  • While other government employees who were stationed in the area — mostly from the Department of Energy — have received $25.7 billion in federal assistance, Air Force vets like Ely and Crete don’t qualify for that aid because their time at the base is not on record, and they cannot prove they were there.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Our Nation’s Capital proves to be one of the most unsafe places with carjacking’s spiking by 97%

DC-Crime-Crisis

Important Takeaways:

  • DC car insurance premiums soar amid auto theft, carjacking surge
  • Residents of the District of Columbia paid the sixth-highest amount on car insurance when compared to the 50 states in 2023 with an average annual full-coverage rate of $2,756 last year – which amounts to nearly $230 a month, according to a report by Insurify. The report found that Washington, D.C., residents’ car insurance premiums were 37% higher than the national average, which was $2,019 for a full-coverage policy, as national auto insurance rates increased by 24% last year.
  • Police data show carjackings in the nation’s capital spiked by 97.9% in 2023 with 958 reported carjackings last year compared to 484 in 2022, with motor vehicle theft up 82% from 3,756 in 2022 to 6,829 in 2023. Vehicle theft in the greater Washington-Maryland-Virginia area also rose by 68% last year, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Final Warning if your Big Rig is in the street you could lose your insurance, corporate accounts will be cut, your bank accounts will be frozen

Proverbs 22:8 “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of his fury will fail.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Banks have started to freeze accounts linked to the protests, says Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland
  • In a final warning, finance minister says truckers at the protest will be stripped of their insurance
  • Freeland, who is also the finance minister, said the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies have been gathering intelligence on convoy protesters and their supporters and sharing that information with financial institutions to restrict access to cash and cryptocurrency.
  • The law also allows banks to target for account closure donors to the GoFundMe and the GiveSendGo fundraising campaigns that fueled this protest. Freeland said she wouldn’t get into the “specifics of whose accounts are being frozen.”
  • Citing terrorist financing laws, the government has forced crowdfunding websites and payment providers to register with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), the government’s financial intelligence unit.
  • Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the country’s banks and other financial institutions have been ordered to stop doing business with people who are “directly or indirectly” associated with the anti-vaccine mandate protests that have seriously disrupted Ottawa’s downtown core.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Germany counts cost of floods as hopes of finding survivors fade

By Kirsti Knolle and Riham Alkousaa

BERLIN (Reuters) – A relief official dampened hopes on Wednesday of finding more survivors in the rubble of villages devastated by floods in western Germany, as a poll showed many Germans felt policymakers had not done enough to protect them.

More than 170 people died in last week’s flooding, Germany’s worst natural disaster in more than half a century, and thousands went missing.

“We are still looking for missing persons as we clear roads and pump water out of basements,” Sabine Lackner, deputy chief of the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW), told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland.

Any victims found now are likely to be dead, she said.

One woman in Insul, in the rural Eifel region, said people had emerged from their houses like ghosts last week to see whether their neighbors were alive. In the Ahrweiler district, of which Insul is part, 123 people died.

For immediate relief, the federal government will initially provide up to 200 million euros ($235.5 million) in emergency aid, and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said more funds can be made available if needed.

That will come on top of at least 250 million euros provided by the affected states to repair buildings and damaged local infrastructure and to help people in crisis situations.

Scholz said the government would contribute to the cost of rebuilding infrastructure such as roads and bridges. The full extent of the damage is not clear, but Scholz said that rebuilding after previous floods cost about 6 billion euros.

PUBLIC CRITICISM

The floods have dominated the political agenda before a national election in September and raised uncomfortable questions about why Europe’s richest economy was caught flat-footed.

Two-thirds of Germans believe that federal and regional policymakers should have done more to protect communities from flooding, a survey by the INSA institute for German mass-circulation paper Bild showed on Wednesday.

Interior minister Horst Seehofer, who faced calls from opposition politicians to resign over the high death toll, said there would be no shortage of money for reconstruction.

“That is why people pay taxes, so that they can receive help in situations like this. Not everything can be insured,” he told a news conference.

Insured losses from the floods may total 4 billion to 5 billion euros ($4.7-5.9 billion), said the GDV insurance industry association. Damage in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate is likely to exceed the 4.65 billion euros recorded after a deluge in August 2002, it said.

The estimate does not include losses from the southern German state of Bavaria and in Saxony in the east last weekend.

Only around 45% of homeowners in Germany have insurance that covers flood damage, according to the GDV, triggering a discussion about the need for compulsory insurance.

“As the time interval between heavy natural disasters gets shorter and shorter, one needs a debate about a protection scheme and how it could be designed,” Seehofer said.

Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Deutschlandfunk radio aid would include funds to help businesses such as restaurants or hair salons make up for lost revenue.

($1 = 0.8490 euros)

(Writing by Maria Sheahan, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Mass shooting insurance in high demand as U.S. emerges from lockdown

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Carolyn Cohn

(Reuters) – As normality filters back into American lives after a year of lockdowns, hospitals and other institutions are busy making provisions for one aspect of that old normal they would rather consign to the past – mass shootings.

Last year was the least deadly for U.S. mass shootings in a decade, a Reuters tally shows.

But spring has brought a resurgence and insurers are reporting a jump in demand for protection against such events, at a time when the pent-up traumas and frustrations of living through a pandemic are also re-entering the public domain.

Client inquiries for what the industry calls active shooter policies have risen 50% year on year in the past six weeks, said Tarique Nageer, Terrorism Placement Advisory Leader at Marsh, the world’s biggest insurance broker.

Such policies gained popularity in recent years following a spate of school shootings. They typically cover victim lawsuits, building repairs, legal fees, medical expenses and trauma counseling.

This year, however, even though fatal shootings in U.S. hospitals are comparatively rare and mass ones one-in-a-decade events, Nageer says demand has been particularly strong from the healthcare sector.

That finding is supported by Tim Davies, head of crisis management at Canopius, a Lloyd’s of London global specialty insurer.

Most hospitals are open to the public and their emergency wards, where patients with COVID-19 and other severe illness and injuries get treatment, can become triggers for potentially volatile behavior.

“Those are places where you could see people who are disgruntled that members of their family might have died and didn’t get a vaccine or weren’t treated properly,” Davies said.

Such concerns have led to an about 25% to 50% hike in active shooter insurance prices compared to last year for healthcare firms, while overall rates have remained steady, he said.

Chris Kirby, head of political violence cover at insurer Optio, said active shooter policy rates had risen by as much as 50% for some clients, without specifying any industry sector.

SCHOOLS AND CHURCHES TOO

Brokers say that, besides hospitals, retail establishments, schools, universities, restaurants and places of worship are other prominent clients, buying cover ranging from $1 million to as high as $75 million.

The United States witnessed 200 mass shootings in the first 132 days of this year, according to a report by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit research group that defines them as any event involving the shooting of four or more people other than the assailant.

Hart Brown, senior vice president of R3 Continuum, a crisis management consultancy that helps clients deal with the aftermaths of about 800 shootings a year, said violence had migrated from public spaces into homes in 2020.

But this year, demand for R3 Continuum’s services is up 15% to 20%, he says, with the gradual reopening of offices having brought violence back to the workplace – compounded by pandemic-induced stresses and economic insecurities often endured in isolation.

“The environment that was created by the pandemic, with the social distancing, the lockdown, and so forth and the compounding stressors is really what’s driving much of the violence that we’re seeing right now,” he said.

A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation backs up that assessment, showing 41% of U.S. adults reporting symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders in January, compared with 11% in the first half of 2019.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru and Carolyn Cohn in London; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and John Stonestreet)

Pandemic-proofing: Insurance may never be the same again

By Noor Zainab Hussain

(Reuters) – Insurers are creating products for a world where virus outbreaks could become the new normal after many businesses were left out in the cold during the COVID-19 crisis.

While new pandemic-proof policies might not be cheap, they offer businesses from restaurants to film production companies to e-commerce retailers ways of insuring against disruptions and losses if another virus strikes.

The providers include big insurers and brokers adding new products to existing coverage, as well as niche players that see an opportunity in filling the void left by mainstream firms that categorize virus outbreaks like wars or nuclear explosions.

Tech firm Machine Cover, for example, aims to offer policies next year that would give relief during lockdowns. Using apps and other data sources, the Boston-based company measures traffic levels around businesses such as restaurants, department stores, hairdressers and car dealers.

If traffic drops below a certain level, it pays out, whatever the reason.

“This is the type of coverage which … businesses thought they had paid for when they bought their current business interruption policies before the coronavirus pandemic,” the company’s founder Inder-Jeet Gujral told Reuters.

“I believe this will be a major opportunity because post-COVID, it would be as irresponsible to not buy insurance against pandemics as it would be to not buy insurance against fire.”

The company is backed by insurer Hiscox and individual investors, mostly from the insurance and private equity world.

Restaurants in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, where Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Monday ordered dining to shut down soon after reopening, are now reeling, said Andrew Giambarba, a broker for Insurance Office of America in Doral, Florida.

“It’s been like they made it to the ninth round of the fight and were holding on when this punch came out of nowhere,” said Giambarba, whose clients include restaurants that did not get payouts under their business interruption coverage.

“Every niche that is dealing with insurance that is affected by business interruption needs every new product they can have.”

FILLING THE VOID

Pandemic exemptions have helped some insurers emerge relatively unscathed and the sector has largely resisted pressure to provide more virus cover. Indeed, some insurers that paid out for event cancellations and other losses have removed pandemics from their coverage.

British risk managers association Airmic said last week that the pandemic had contributed to a lack of adequate insurance at an affordable price and most of its members were looking at other ways to reduce risk.

To help fill the void in a locked-down world, Lloyd’s of London insurer Beazley Plc, started selling a contingency policy last month to insure organizers of streamed music, cultural and business events against technical glitches.

“These events are completely reliant on the technology working and a failure can be financially crippling,” said Mark Symons, contingency underwriter at Beazley.

Marsh, the world’s biggest insurance broker, has teamed up with AXA XL, part of France’s AXA, and data firm Arity, which is part of Allstate, to help businesses such as U.S. supermarket chains, restaurants and e-commerce retailers cope with the challenges of social distancing.

With home deliveries surging, firms have hired individual drivers to meet demand, but commercial auto liability insurance for “gig” contractors with their own vehicles is hard to find.

Marsh and its partners devised a policy based on usage with a price-by-mile insurance, which can be cheaper than typical commercial auto cover as delivering a pizza doesn’t have the same risks as driving people around.

“Even when the pandemic is over, we believe last-mile delivery will continue to grow,” said Robert Bauer, head of Marsh’s U.S. sharing economy and mobility practice.

A report by consultants Capgemini showed that demand for usage-based insurance has skyrocketed since COVID-19 first broke out and more than 50% of the customers it surveyed wanted it.

However, only half of the insurers interviewed by Capgemini for its World Insurance Report said they offered it.

BESPOKE COVER

Since businesses are only now learning how outbreaks can affect them, some new products are effectively custom-made.

Elite Risk Insurance in Newport Beach, California, has been offering “COVID outbreak relapse coverage” since May for businesses forced to shut down a second time, its founder Jeff Kleid said.

The policies are crafted around specific businesses and only pay out when certain conditions are met, Kleid said.

For film and television production companies that could be when a cast member contracts the virus, forcing them to stop shooting. Another client, which raises livestock for restaurants, is covered for a scenario in which it would be impossible to get animal feed.

Such policies do not come cheap. A $1 million policy could cost between about $80,000 to $100,000 depending on the terms.

“The insurance … is costly because it covers a risk that does not have a historical basis for calculating the price,” Kleid says.

And in March, when COVID-19 ravaged northern Italy, Generali’s Europ Assistance offered medical help, financial support and tele-consultations for sufferers when discharged from hospital, on top of regular health insurance.

It sold 1.5 million policies in just two weeks and now has 3 million customers in Europe and United States.

Some insurers are also working on changes to employee compensation and health insurance schemes. With millions of workers not expected to return to offices anytime soon, some large insurers in Asia are preparing coverage to account for that, according to people familiar with those efforts.

At least one Japanese insurer has started work on a product to cover employees for injury while working at home, they said.

“Working from home will be the new normal for years to come. That would make the scope of the employee compensation scheme meaningless if a person suffers an injury while at home,” said a Hong Kong-based senior executive at a European insurer.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru, Suzanne Barlyn in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, Carolyn Cohn in London and Sumeet Chatterjee in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Muvija M; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and David Clarke)

Factbox: Insurers return part of auto premiums as coronavirus cuts driving

(Reuters) – Major U.S. insurers are offering credit to auto and motorcycle policyholders following a decline in driving, as most Americans stay at home under widespread orders to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Following is a list of companies that have offered to return premiums.

ALLSTATE CORP

Allstate, one of the largest U.S. auto insurers, said on Monday it would return more than $600 million in premiums to customers. Most customers will receive a “payback” of 15% of their monthly premium in April and May, the company said.

AMERICAN FAMILY INSURANCE

The auto insurer said it would return a total of $200 million to auto insurance customers beginning in mid-April. Customers will receive $50 per vehicle covered by their policies, the company said.

AVIVA CANADA

Aviva Canada said it was offering $100 million in additional immediate relief measures to drivers, including options that would reduce insurance premiums. Customers who have stopped driving entirely could reduce their auto insurance premiums by up to 75%.

CHUBB

The world’s largest-listed property and casualty insurance company said it will give personal auto insurance clients in the United States credit on annual renewal premiums, reflecting a 35% cut for the months of April and May.

ERIE INSURANCE

The insurer said it would reduce rates for personal and commercial auto insurance customers in 12 states and the District of Columbia. It estimated the amount of financial relief for Erie Insurance customers to be about $200 million.

FARMERS INSURANCE

Farmers and 21st Century-branded auto customers will receive a 25% reduction in their April premium. The insurer said it has also implemented flexible payment plans and a temporary pause on cancellations.

GEICO

Geico Corp, part of billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc , said it will offer about $2.5 billion of credits to its 19 million auto and motorcycle policyholders. The insurer said it will offer a 15% credit on policies up for renewal between April 8 and Oct. 7, averaging about $150 per auto policy and $30 per motorcycle policy.

HANOVER INSURANCE GROUP

The company said  it will return 15% of April and May auto premiums to its eligible personal lines customers. Hanover will also offer flexible bill payment options.

LIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE

Liberty Mutual Insurance will give personal auto insurance customers a 15% refund on two months of their annual premium, returning about $250 million to Liberty Mutual and Safeco personal auto insurance customers.

METLIFE

The company said it is providing financial relief and preserving coverage in the event of missed payments. Active MetLife auto customers, who have paid to date, will receive a 15% credit for April and May based on their monthly premiums.

PROGRESSIVE INSURANCE CORP

Among the largest U.S. auto insurers, Progressive said it would provide about $1 billion to personal auto customers. The company will credit eligible customers 20% of their April and May premiums.

STATE FARM

The largest U.S. auto insurer said it would pay $2 billion in dividend to its customers, with premium credit of about 25% for the period between March 20 and May 31.

TRAVELERS COMPANIES INC

The insurer said  it was giving U.S. personal auto insurance customers a 15% credit on their April and May premiums through its new stay-at-home auto premium credit program. It said it will continue to provide auto coverage to customers whose jobs include using their personal vehicles to make food, grocery, pharmacy and medical supply deliveries.

USAA

USAA, America’s fifth largest property-casualty insurer, said  it will return $520 million to its members. Every member with an auto insurance policy in effect as of March 31 will receive a 20% credit on two months of premiums in the coming weeks.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni, Leslie Adler, Stev Orlofsky and Shinjini Ganguli)

California puts one-year halt on insurers dropping customers in wildfire-prone areas

By Andrew Hay

(Reuters) – California on Thursday ordered a one-year halt on insurance companies dropping customers in wildfire-prone areas at a time when state insurers are trying to limit spiraling costs from climate change.

The moratorium, the first of its kind in the state, affects about 800,000 homeowners in areas hit by 2019 wildfires. State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara also asked insurers to voluntarily stop cancelling clients in other areas at risk to wildfire.

“I am calling on insurance companies to push the pause button on issuing non-renewals for one year to give breathing room to communities and homeowners,” Lara said in a statement.

The moratorium, which ends Dec. 5, 2020, is meant to draw insurers and state legislators to the negotiating table to find a solution to the state’s wildfire insurance dilemma.

The measure still leaves tens of thousands of rural homeowners dealing with insurance cancellations and rate increases after the state’s deadliest wildfires killed over 100 people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes and structures in 2017 and 2018.

The insurance industry is retreating from at-risk areas after paying nearly $25 billion in damage claims for the record fire years, according to California Department of Insurance data.

Fires in 2017 alone wiped out a decade of underwriting profits for state insurers, according to John Norwood, a Sacramento lobbyist for insurance firms.

At the same time, California’s homeowner insurance premiums remain below the national average, ranked 32nd in state terms in 2016, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, likened the situation to an auto insurer thinking it was insuring stable, 50-year-old drivers.

“In fact, they’re insuring a bunch of 16-year-olds hopped up on Red Bull doing social media postings while they’re driving,” said Frazier, citing California’s high risk of wildfires.

Reinsurers that provide insurers financial protection are raising rates based on climate-change exposure and state insurance companies need to adjust risk levels, rates or both to continue covering fire-prone areas, he said.

The state’s insurance commissioner cited evidence, however, that homeowner insurance had already become difficult for many Californians to obtain from traditional providers, forcing them into expensive, less comprehensive options like the state’s “insurer of last resort” FAIR Plan.

Among other goals, Lara is looking for legislation to require insurers to provide coverage to customers and communities that have taken steps to mitigate wildfire risks.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Peter Cooney)

Rising U.S. losses from powerful hurricanes flag need for better protection

A police car is submerged in New Orleans East August 31, 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit the area. Authorities struggled on Wednesday to evacuate thousands of people from hurricane-battered New Orleans as food and water grew scarce and looters raided stores, [while U.S. President George W. Bush said it would take years to recover from the devastation.]

Rising U.S. losses from powerful hurricanes flag need for better protection
By Anna Scholz-Carlson

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Only a few U.S. states are taking significant steps to reduce hurricane risks, as a study this week showed the most damaging storms are now three times as frequent as a century ago and have become the costliest type of disaster, scientists said.

Using a new method, a team at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute found the frequency of the worst hurricanes had increased 330% over the last century in the United States.

But many government authorities in the country remain unprepared to deal with the surging risk, said Natalie Peyronnin Snider, senior director of coastal resilience for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a U.S.-based advocacy group.

Getting ready would require policy and ground-level changes, including efforts to boost coastal protection, she said.

In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), University of Copenhagen scientists looked at parts of the United States hit by hurricanes in the last century, analysing changes in wealth and population densities to compare losses over time.

Previous research suggested the growing costs of damage from storms were largely due to costlier infrastructure and homes in their path, rather than a rise in the strength or frequency of hurricanes themselves, said Aslak Grinsted, a study lead author.

But the new work showed the growing number of powerful hurricanes was the key factor in increasing losses, he said.

Having clearer information should help communities plan ahead to curb losses, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Louisiana is one of the few states that has a comprehensive plan to deal with a growing hurricane threat, said EDF’s Snider.

In 2012, it launched a $50-billion Coastal Master Plan to elevate homes with severe flooding risk, create more wetlands, restore marshes and create rock breakwaters to better protect communities from surging storms.

The effort aims to help the southern state better weather hurricanes over the next 50 years, according to the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority website.

The plan was in part a response to severe losses from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it noted.

Snider said using natural systems to curb hurricane risk – such as wetlands that can absorb excess water and prevent flooding or oyster-covered reefs to absorb wave energy – are cost-effective ways to curb damage from powerful hurricanes.

But Louisiana is not the only state looking to lower its hurricane risks.

In New York, a community-led project aims to restore 1 billion live oysters to New York Harbor by 2035, in part to tackle storm threats, according to its website.

Still, federal and state governments need to do more to protect their people, assets and ecosystems, Snider said.

“It’s really important that we start to be proactive and aggressive … in building resilience in our systems, which not only pays off financially but also for the health of communities,” she said.

Each dollar spent to cut disaster risk can save six dollars otherwise spent recovering after a disaster, she added.

(Reporting by Anna Scholz-Carlson; editing by Laurie Goering and Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)