April Showers. . .

Please Note: this post was supposed to go up while I was on vacation last week! Sorry for the delay, I hope it still proves informative.

Where did April go?! We're heading into the end of May and somehow with one thing and another I didn't manage to get our "Collection Selections" e-newsletter highlighting journal articles and new books published.

I also haven't had a chance to update the blog or start spring cleaning my desk! We did manage to write and post a new newsletter for the library though, so I would definitely recommend going over there and taking a look if you didn't see it when it came out on May 7th.

I  have a few ideas on blog posts I'd like to get up and running. We had a couple of Q&As in the newsletter which I think we could flesh out a little more. One on co-insurance penalties and one on no-fault vs. non no-fault auto insurance states (an important topic here in New England since we can so easily cross borders into either territory). I was also talking with some friends this weekend about homeowners/renters insurance and, having just put in a claim on my personal articles policy, I thought it might be useful to take a look at some homeowners basics.

While most of my current ideas run toward the consumer end of the spectrum, we would love to provide more technical information on the blog for those professionals who are readers. Please, as always, feel free to email blog suggestions to shart@insurancelibrary.org

In the meantime, I thought I might highlight some of the articles I wanted to mention in the April Collection Selections newsletter.

Our Library hosted a new seminar on May 8th taught by Craig Stanovich. He was discussing Cyber Risk and Privacy Violation Insurance. It was a very timely topic since a flood of new information on the topic came out this spring.

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On March 19th, Business Insurance devoted an entire issue of their publication to Cyber Risks.Clearly if you're interested in the topic, you should take a look at that entire issue, but one article that might be of interest, especially to producers, is entitled Few Firms Buy Coverage for Cyber Risks: Survey. Not only does it provide information on the purchasing patterns for cyber insurance but it has a table showing "Why Companies Do Not Buy Cyber Coverage." There's also a great article by Scott N. Godes of Dickstein Shapiro, LLP entitled Surprising Sources of Coverage. While he recommends checking the company's Cyber Insurance Policies for coverage first, he also suggests that there might be coverage found in Commercial General Liability policies, Crime policies, Commercial first-party property policies and Employment Practices Liability policies.

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Also out this spring, was Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigation Report. They have collected eight year's worth of data breach information from around the world. Their "goal is that the data and analysis presented in this report prove helpful to the planning and security efforts of [their] reader." It's a great resource for Risk Managers!

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In April, Towers Watson published their 3rd Annual Risk and Finance Manager Survey. In their executive summary, they mention that 72% of North American Companies have not purchased network security/privacy liability policies. Not only is this survey of great importance to risk managers, producers would do well to take a look at it to when trying to figure out what their clients are likely to need/why they might not have the coverage they require.

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For those looking for more in-depth coverage on Cyber Liability, The Library also recently purchased a copy of the National Underwriter book: Cyber Liability and Insurance: Managing the Risks of Intangible Assets.  You can click here to take a look at the table of contents. The book even includes some specimen forms!

This was just a short sampling of some recent Cyber Liability items we have in our collection. If you're interested in more coverage of this, or another insurance-related topic we encourage you to stop by the library or shoot us an email!

Just for the Health of It!

I'm popping back in to direct your attention to another New York Times article we thought you might find of interest.

Throughout the Affordable Health Care debate, Massachusetts has been held up as a an example of how well universal health care can work. The New York Times has just published an article focusing on the 2% in Massachusetts who are being penalized for not having insurance.

You can take a look here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/us/massachusetts-health-insurance-mandate-stirs-dissent.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120328

Plate Movement

That's not exactly the kind of plate movement I plan on discussing today. As I mentioned last week, I planned on writing a post on earthquakes before I got interrupted by another snow storm. Luckily, because of the lag time before posting far more people have written on the topic of earthquakes and I can provide you with links for further reading. Just like the 2001 "summer of the shark" 2010 could have been called "the year of earthquakes." The number of earthquakes in 2010 (and so far in 2011) does not seem to be above average. You can look at earthquake data for the last decade from the U. S. Geological Survey for confirmation. According to the June, 2010 Reactions Magazine article, The $1trn Exposure "The number of earthquakes this year [2010] has been normal but the casualties and insured losses have not. Risk Modellers are asking where the next Mega quake could strike." UPDATE: This sentiment was re-affirmed today by the Wall Street Journal article: Swiss Re Expects Quakes to Become Deadlier, Costlier. The article goes on to provide some forecasting of the most vulnerable regions world wide. The region in Japan they thought most likely to cause severe damage (and casualties) was not the one where the current earthquake has hit. Wired Magazinee discusses this error in their article Japan Quake Epicenter Was in Unexpected Location. I believe if you asked the average person where they think the next big US-based earthquake would be, they would respond California. They wouldn't necessarily be wrong. Cascadia is listed as a "most vulnerable area" in the Reactions article cited above. Los Angeles is listed as a U.S. Megadisaster threat for earthquakes on an informative map that Risk Management Magazine published in March of 2010 (for more from this map, feel free to contact us, or stop by the library to take a look). George Santayana would be disappointed in those responses though, especially in this, the bicentennial year of the New Madrid earthquakes. According to Risk Management Magazine's Risk Atlas mentioned above, "recent research suggests that the [New Madrid] fault line may be more stable than ever, but FEMA has said that a 7.7 magnitude quake here could lead to 'the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States." The fault line affects Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee but when it quaked in 1811 and 1812 it affected states even farther away. BestWeek, in a February 28, 2011 article said: "The area along the Mississippi River is no longer a sparsely populated area with the occasional log cabin. If a series of three major earthquakes were to strike that area today, it could cost an estimated $79 billion in insured property losses, according to AIR Worldwide." The article is accompanied by a colorful loss map illustrating the losses in millions for the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Of course, insured losses are different than total losses; this is especially true in the United States where flood and earthquake insurance are not included in the standard homeowners or commercial property policies. BestWeek published another article in their February 28, 2011 issue titled Costly Quake Covers Limit U.S. Policies. The article points out that 90% of the homeowners in New Zealand (the site of two earthquakes in the last six months) have earthquake insurance. New Zealanders attending a meeting on earthquake insurance, were shocked to find out that 90% of Californians do not have earthquake coverage. According to Advisen's front page news on Monday, The Wall Street Journal published an article examining coverage in the United States for major disasters like those in Japan. The article, entitled: Disaster Insurance: How Well Are You Covered, addresses some of the same concerns as those mentioned in the BestWeek article. Risk Management Magazine has an article in the March, 2010 edition titled After Haiti: The Future of Disasters. They end their article with this: "Catastrophes are just as possible domestically as they are abroad. The longer we go without taking the necessary steps to increase preparedness, the sooner we will have to stop calling these natural disasters and start calling them man-made catastrophes." Perhaps that's a bit sensational, but it does get across the point that natural disasters, especially earthquakes, require preparation on our part. The library stands ready to answer more in-depth questions about earthquake insurance, both for consumers and those in the industry. We have access to any of the articles mentioned in this blog post as well as statistical information on earthquake insurance and groups writing such insurance in various states. We even have some (though not a lot) of information on earthquake and other natural disaster forecasting. Please feel free to contact us if you're interested in any specific information.

New Year's Resolution

When you're in school you follow the academic calendar, with the year starting in September. When you're in business your year starts with the new fiscal year. Here at the library, it's not official, but I feel like the year starts again after The Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony is over (I might be the only one here who feels that way).

We just completed another busy start to our fall season and had a very successful (we think) event on Friday. So I feel it is time to make some new resolutions about our coming year. I vow that the library blog will no longer sit sadly neglected. We will attempt to post at least once a week, if not more.

While I cannot promise that each post will be long and descriptive, we would like to see this space be a place where we discuss current happenings at the library and in the insurance field as a whole. It might be that we just pop in and mention a great article in the New York Times that describes Insurance Exchanges (with a helpful image for clients); that we announce that the library has started an insurance fiction section (we have the entire set of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone Mysteries); or we might ask you to respond with suggestions/comments on events and offerings from the library.