A View from the Press Box

For two years now, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that the industry’s lousy reputation is, for the most part, undeserved, and that carriers must take ownership of the problem and start touting all the good they do for society.  Then along came Bob Hartwig’s recent speech at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which pointed out that insurers don’t get enough credit for all the lives they save and injuries they help people avoid.

(more…)

The latest sequel in the “Saw” movie series channels the public’s wrath against health insurers by targeting those in claims for its slice and dice genre–yet another example of how pop culture continues to capitalize on the industry’s poor reputation. (more…)

Commercial insurers wondering what they need to do to attract and hang onto their customers got an earful from the 411 buyers responding to open-ended questions about what they want from their carriers, as part of the first Risk Manager Choice Awards survey, conducted by the Flaspöhler Research Group in partnership with National Underwriter. (more…)

The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies and FM Global were the big winners in the first “Risk Manager Choice Awards,” based on a survey of 411 corporate insurance buyers run by the Flaspöhler Research Group, in partnership with National Underwriter. For a full report, go to http://bit.ly/392FyL.

No matter how many regulations or internal fail-safe systems an organization or a government puts in place, preventing systemic economic collapses means accounting for the worst instincts in human nature. Can enterprise risk managers mitigate “people” risk?

(more…)

The insurance industry shot itself in the foot once again with the clumsy release of a study claiming that the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform bill will end up raising premiums for all. While many of the points made in the survey are sound, its poor delivery has galvanized the industry’s critics into a lynch mob. (more…)

In response to my news article about his recent speech blasting regulators for failing to head off the subprime mortgage debacle that crashed the economy (see http://bit.ly/e6bIs), a spokesman for Maurice Greenberg sent a letter, offering an explanation of how the enterprise risk management system Hank set up while at AIG might have gone awry after he left, prompting reckless trading in credit default swaps that left the company dependent on a government bailout to avoid bankruptcy. Click on to read the full letter: (more…)

The health insurance industry is very nervous about the reform bills making their way through Congress, and rightfully so, as lawmakers are getting cold feet about requiring individuals to buy insurance, or penalizing them if they do not. (more…)

They say that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones–a time-honored piece of advice ignored earlier this week by Maurice Greenberg, AIG’s former head honcho, when he tossed regulators under the bus, blaming them for our current economic mess without taking much responsibility for the failings of his own kind. (more…)

President Barack Obama has been appearing everywhere and anywhere to push his health care reform agenda this past month.  U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, quipped that the only place he hadn’t yet seen his commander in chief plug away for reform was on The Food Channel. Personally, I think the President is just getting started, and urge him to start thinking outside the mainstream media box.

(more…)