Specialty Insurance Blog

College Lectures Online

Did you know there are numerous online sources for college lectures (although not necessarily for our favorite subject, insurance)?  Andy Kessler has a short summary of this recent trend (see here).

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One of the problems with online lectures is finding what you want.  Two obvious sources are YouTube and Apple’s iTunes, where you can find AppleU.  There are a number of useful articles and blogs that have provided sources beyond Andy Kessler.  While many sources are trying to sell online courses, mostly for credit, Andy points out that some great lectures are available free of charge.

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US News & World Report ran a recent article on Massachusetts Institute of Technology Prof. Walter Lewin (see here), who has numerous lectures on line (see an example on YouTube).  MIT provides lectures on its own website (here) and on AppleU.

Here are some other articles and blogs providing information and sources for online lectures:

• The American (online lectures here)
• Open Culture (online lectures here)
• Under the Holly Tree (online lectures here)
• Switched (online lectures here)
• Lecture Fox

While there must be college and graduate lectures on insurance, they were well hidden on Google.  We did find a course on personal finance from Indiana University which includes a section on insurance and risk management (see here).  And the American Institute of Marine Underwriters has a long list of lectures, including a lecture series entitled the Wine and Cheese Lecture Series:

This lecture series will provide insights into proper packing and storage of wine and cheese.

Not free, however.

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Update - Additional sources:

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Open Source Post

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Brought to you by Tennant Risk Services.

Federal Employee Insurance Niche

One example of a specialty insurance agent executing a niche oriented strategy is a company specializing in writing insurance coverages, including professional liability insurance, for current and former federal employees.  Wright & Company provides supplemental insurance programs, such as investigators professional liability insurance, designed for federal employees and their unique exposures.

In case you missed it, Wright & Company was highlighted recently in a New York Times article concerning the CIA officer accused of destroying tapes (see here).  What a great marketing opportunity.

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Brought to you by Tennant Risk Services.

Presentations

Guy Kawasaki, author of How to Change the World, has an excellent post on presentations, a subject near and dear to the heart of all insurance sales folk.  He has commented a number of times on this topic previously, as have we (see our prior post).  In this post (see here) he interviews Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter).  This post is a little different in that it does not provide a recipe, just general guidelines on what makes a presentation great.  Worth a quick read, at least.

Brought to you by Tennant Risk Services.

Doubling Up on Risk - Citizens & SBA

To those of us in the insurance business, an industry built on assessing and transferring risk, the actions of Citizens Insurance in Florida (see here for background) seem a little unusual for an underwriting operation.  Not only does it appear that Citizens has taken significant catastrophic exposure with limited resources and little diversification, but now it appears that they have doubled their risk by concentrating their assets in the governmental pool run by the SBA (the State Board of Administration).  You might remember that this governmental pool had to freeze withdrawals because of a run initiated by losses from their subprime investments (see here). 

Citizens had approximately $2.0 billion invested in this pool, and approximately $7.0 billion in total managed by the SBA (see here & here, and here for more detailed information and an overview).  One comment (from here):

Citizens has said that while the securities are a concern, they don't present a liquidity problem as long as there is not a major hurricane.

Well of course not - that is what the securities are for: when there is hurricane.  Note that the investment managers at the SBA received performance bonuses last year (see here).  Additional information & commentary from Risk Prof here.

Insurance Ads

Insurance advertisements are normally really bad, but it is possible to create funny and effective ads for insurance.  Thanks to InsureMe for noting three ads from Trigon Health on their website (see here).  And we may not like the direct approach, but the gecko ads are very funny (see here, and, apparently, the first here).  The humor utilized outside the US for insurance ads is a little different than what we would normally expect, but some are quite funny (see here, here and - the best – here).

Brought to you by Tennant Risk Services.

Mississippi Insurance Litigation

We have not spent much time on the post-Katrina insurance settlement litigation going on in Mississippi, or the circus regarding the attorneys involved (see a prior post).  However, RiskProf (see here) points us to David Rosmiller of the Insurance Coverage Law Blog and his continuing scrutiny of this subject and the Mississippi AG's office (see here and here).  It seems the lead plaintiffs group may be crumbling (see here).

New York Insurance Regulator

We mentioned Eric R. Dinallo, New York’s insurance commissioner, in a prior post because of his unique approach to insurance regulation.  He seems to be focused on solutions, not on problems.  He is mentioned in a recent New York Times article (see here) for his unique approach to generating a solution for municipal bond insurance in New York:  He called Berkshire Hathaway and encouraged them to form a new bond insurer.

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Brought to you by Tennant Risk Services.

Mississippi Trial Lawyer

Trial lawyers are still taking full advantage of the aftermath of Katrina by pursuing insurance companies for what they consider to be bad faith claims practices.  A very interesting article on a big-name Mississippi trial lawyer provides an interesting perspective (see here).

Brought to you by Tennant Risk Services.