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Powering the Future
Grid stability and system strength have become major issues around the world. At press time, New York is in the midst of rolling blackouts. Blistering heat is straining power grids across the eastern half of the U.S., leading to a blackout in part of New York City’s borough of Queens as the local utility issued a warning to conserve electricity.
The scenario is not new. My home state of Texas sees alerts every summer for residents to turn down the A/C on extremely hot summer days due to high power demands. And with the growing energy demand due to more and more technology needs, such as AI data centers, the U.S. and the world need to think about a mix of energy supply that works together to keep the lights, and A/C, on.
This special issue of Insurance Journal highlights the growing renewable energy industry and speaks with insurance specialists dedicated to this increasingly important sector of the economy. Because without power there might not be an economy—at least not one that operates on technology.
Renewable energy is growing in the United States and worldwide. In the U.S., wind and solar energy generated more electricity in 2024 than coal for the first time ever. But growth extends far beyond wind and solar. There’s growing interest in nuclear energy, hydropower, and geothermal power. And then there’s the expanding industry of power storage to relieve pressure on U.S. power grids during heavy energy months.
“We need power for everything, for our daily lives, down to different industries—from manufacturing to technology. We need reliable power,” Priscilla Pazmino-Vitela, head of natural resources – Americas for Allianz Commercial, told Insurance Journal in this special report (see page 28). The energy industry will continue to see growth from a variety of energy providers, including renewables “because we need to have reliable energy just to meet the demand that we’re seeing in innovation technology, or data centers,” she said.
While U.S. renewable energy maybe hit a road bump in investment due to a possible repeal of federal tax credits in some areas, global investment isn’t slowing down overall. Investment in clean technologies—renewables, nuclear, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency, and electrification—is on course to hit a record $2.2 trillion this year.
And that’s good news for insurance specialists in this space.
‘We need power for everything, for our daily lives, down to different industries—from manufacturing to technology. We need reliable power.’
“There absolutely is an opportunity to drive this green transition and help this green transition along the way,” Fraser McLachlan, CEO of GCube and recently appointed chairman of the newly formed Tokio Marine GX (TMGX), says. “And make some premium out of it, as well.”
Circulation Manager Elizabeth Duffy | eduffy@wellsmedia.com
Staff Accountant
Sarah Kersbergen | skersbergen@wellsmedia.com
EDITORIAL
V.P. of Content
Andrea Wells | awells@insurancejournal.com
Executive Editor Emeritus
Andrew Simpson | asimpson@wellsmedia.com
National Editor
Chad Hemenway | chemenway@insurancejournal.com
Southeast Editor
William Rabb | wrabb@insurancejournal.com
South Central Editor/Midwest Editor
Ezra Amacher | eamacher@insurancejournal.com
West Editor Don Jergler | djergler@insurancejournal.com
International Editor L.S. Howard | lhoward@insurancejournal.com
Content Editor Allen Laman | alaman@wellsmedia.com
Assistant Editors
Jahna Jacobson | jjacobson@insurancejournal.com
Kimberly Tallon | ktallon@carriermanagement.com
Columnists & Contributors
Contributors: Marc Adee, Mark Berven, Mike Erlandson
Columnists: Chris Burand, Erin Dwyer, Mary Newgard
SALES / MARKETING
Chief Marketing Officer
Julie Tinney | jtinney@insurancejournal.com
West Sales
Dena Kaplan | dkaplan@insurancejournal.com
Romeo Valdez | rvaldez@insurancejournal.com
Kelly DeLaMora | kdelamora@wellsmedia.com
South Central Sales
Mindy Trammell | mtrammell@insurancejournal.com
Southeast and East Sales (except for NY, PA, CT) Howard Simkin | hsimkin@insurancejournal.com
Midwest Sales
Lisa Whalen | (800) 897-9965 x180
East Sales (NY, PA and CT only)
Dave Molchan | (800) 897-9965 x145
Advertising Coordinator
Erin Burns | eburns@insurancejournal.com
Insurance Markets Manager
Kristine Honey | khoney@insurancejournal.com
Sr. Sales & Marketing Coordinator
Laura Roy | lroy@insurancejournal.com
Marketing Administrator Alberto Vazquez | avazquez@insurancejournal.com
Marketing Director Derence Walk | dwalk@insurancejournal.com
DESIGN / WEB / VIDEO
V.P. of Design Guy Boccia | gboccia@insurancejournal.com
Web Team Lead
Josh Whitlow | jwhitlow@insurancejournal.com
Ad Ops Specialist Jeff Cardrant | jcardrant@insurancejournal.com
Web Developer Terrance Woest | twoest@wellsmedia.com
Web Developer Jason Chipp | jchipp@wellsmedia.com
Digital Content Manager
Ashley Cochrane | acochrane@insurancejournal.com
Videographer/Editor
Ashley Waldrop | awaldrop@insurancejournal.com
ACADEMY OF INSURANCE
Director Patrick Wraight | pwraight@ijacademy.com
Online Training Coordinator George Jack | gjack@ijacademy.com
Artificial intelligence is positioned to transform healthcare, even if AI’s most alluring and headline-grabbing promises— like predictive diagnostics that anticipate illness before symptoms appear—remain projections for the future. While much of the spotlight is on what is to come, a quiet AI transformation is underway.
A survey conducted by the Medical Group Management Association in the summer of 2024 found that 42% of medical group leaders reported using some form of ambient listening AI.1 These systems, sometimes called “AI scribes,” aim to capture interactions between physicians and patients through discrete microphones installed in examination rooms. The AI then generates suggested notes and billing codes for physicians to review and enter into the medical record.
With the promise of increased efficiency in the documentation process, it is easy to see why physicians are drawn to this technology. A 2024 American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) survey revealed that nearly 75% of healthcare professionals believe the time and effort required for documentation impedes patient care.2 In another study, over 77% of respondents indicated they often work later than desired or take work home due to excessive documentation tasks.3 Less time spent documenting allows physicians to spend more time with patients and potentially helps combat physician burnout.
The benefits of this technology are obvious and potentially transformational for physicians, but AI also brings new risks to consider. Not the least of which is patient consent. Recent evidence suggests that most patients are skeptical about the utilization of AI in healthcare. In a 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, 60% of respondents reported they would feel uncomfortable if their provider relied on AI for their medical care.4 To help alleviate such concerns, physicians should have patients execute a detailed consent form that explains how the ambient listening system works, what is preserved, and the system’s deletion policy.
Physicians should also obtain and document a patient’s verbal consent at every visit before triggering the listening system. This ensures the patient remains comfortable having their protected health information shared with the system. Additionally, this verification is a legal necessity in states that require consent from all participants to a recorded conversation.
Discoverability is another issue physicians should be mindful of when utilizing this technology. By now, it is well known that most, if not all, malpractice litigation includes a discovery request for all relevant digital communications and metadata stored in the electronic medical record. Such data has provided fertile ground for plaintiffs’ attorneys seeking to weave a narrative in favor of their client, and ambient listening AI could be even more problematic.
While physicians are typically only privy to the AI-generated notes, ambient listening systems may also capture and store a raw audio recording of the entire patient encounter. Whether this data is retained depends on the design and configuration of the specific system. As such, physicians and practices must work with vendors to determine whether their chosen system stores complete audio recordings. If a system retains a complete audio recording of the patient-physician interaction, it will undoubtedly be discoverable in litigation.
In a worst-case scenario, there could be an inconsistency between the note in the EMR and the audio recording. Even a seemingly minor inconsistency could undermine the accuracy and reliability of the entire medical record. It may also be used to suggest that the physician failed to review the AI-generated notes adequately. Negative optics of this nature can derail otherwise defensible cases.
Against this backdrop, there is scant justification for retaining these audio logs once the AI-assisted note has been accurately added to the electronic medical record. To address this, practices should implement clearly articulated retention policies for all data captured by the AI system that is not added to the medical record. Beyond preventing the creation of unnecessarily discoverable data, a well-defined retention protocol that is consistently adhered to should ward off allegations of spoliation. Collaboration with vendors will be needed to ensure the chosen retention protocol is in place.
AI is already reshaping how healthcare operates, and these are just a few risk issues that need to be considered. As this technology evolves, its integration into everyday medical practice will only deepen. Amid these rapid advancements, physicians must remain vigilant to emerging risks, even as they navigate the often-dazzling promise of innovation.
Risk Recommendations
Physicians utilizing ambient listening AI systems should consider the following risk management steps to reduce legal risks:
2. Implement policies for retention and destruction of audio data.
3. Train providers on what is being captured and how to communicate accordingly.
4. Engage legal counsel in evaluating how these systems intersect with controlling discovery rules.
Bradley E. Byrne Jr., Esq., Southeast Regional Risk Manager
News & Markets
Insurance Industry Rejects Proposed Moratorium on State Artificial Intelligence Regulation
By Chad Hemenway
Aproposed decade-long moratorium on state regulation of artificial intelligence has gained the attention of many, including those within the insurance industry.
The 10-year prohibition of AI regulation is contained within the sweeping tax bill, “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and would preempt laws and regulations already in place in dozens of states.
The National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA) on June 16 sent a letter “expressing significant concern” to Senate leadership, who submitted a reconciliation budget bill that has already passed through the House of Representatives.
“PIA strongly urges the Senate to eliminate the reconciliation language enforcing a 10-year moratorium on state AI legislation and regulation, or explicitly exempt the insurance industry’s state
regulation of AI because the industry is already appropriately regulated by the state,” said the letter, signed by Mike Skiados, CEO of PIA.
PIA referenced a model already adopted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) that requires insurers to implement AI governance programs in accordance with all existing state and federal laws. Nearly 30 states have adopted the NAIC’s model on the use of AI by insurers.
Earlier in June, NAIC sent a letter to federal lawmakers following the passage of the bill in the House. The commissioners said state regulation has been effective in evolving market conditions.
“This system has not only protected consumers and fostered innovation but has also allowed for the flexibility and experimentation that is essential in a rapidly changing world,” said NAIC leadership in the letter. “By allowing states to develop and implement appropriately tai-
lored regulatory frameworks, the system ensures that oversight is both robust and adaptable.”
“State insurance regulators understand that AI is a transformative technology that can be leveraged to benefit insurance policyholders by, among other things, creating new product offerings, improving the efficiency of the insurance business, and transforming the consumer experience.”
The language—more specifically the definition of AI within the bill—is also of concern. NAIC called it “overly broad” and questioned whether it not only applies to machine learning but “existing analytical tools and software that insurers rely on every day, including calculations, simulations, and stochastic forecasts…and a multitude of insurtech provided analytical systems for rate setting, underwriting, and claims processing.”
To that end, the American InsurTech Council (AITC) said it “strongly opposes” the AI state regulation moratorium, which it said would “create a dangerous vacuum in oversight during a period of rapid technological change.”
“Such a ban would undermine the foundational principles of insurance regulation in the United States and jeopardize consumer protections at a time when AI is rapidly transforming the way insurance is developed, priced, marketed, underwritten, and delivered,” said the AITC in a statement.
In May, state attorneys general in 40 states urged Congress to get rid of the moratorium proposal within the bill.
On June 16, the National Council of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL) in a statement said a ban on state regulation would “disrupt the overall markets that we oversee” and “wrongly curtail” state legislators’ ability to make policy.
The group said constituents have “been steadfast in asking for protections against the current unknowns surrounding AI, and they cannot wait 10 years for a statebased policy response.”
THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIP
For this independent insurance agent and Taekwondo World Champion, partnering with Smart Choice has led to breakthrough business results. Clients notice when an insurance broker has their back. The Smart Choice partnership has helped the agency keep its retention rates up, even as policyholders increasingly compare rates. With access to a broader range of property/casualty, life/disability and annuity carriers, for both commercial and personal clients, the Short Associates team can offer clients more choices and win more business.
Breaking through barriers to success
“Clients have called to ask why their costs are going up and if there are options. Without my partnership with Smart Choice, I would have lost a lot of business because my phone has rung way more than it ever has in the last two years.”
Short Associate’s Darrell Swanson and Smart Choice-Midwest Regional Director Luke Royal
News & Markets
Agents Must Take the Lead on Personal Cyber Coverage, Report Says
By Jahna Jacobson
While major corporate cyber hacking makes the news nearly every day, what about hackers in homes?
As personal lives and residences become more intertwined with the internet, consumers are at greater risk of personal cybercrime. As risk grows, so does the need to protect consumers—although they may not know it.
Exposure to Personal Cyber Crime
Three out of four consumers have had their personal information lost or stolen, and 28% have had a social media account hacked, according to the new report, “Addressing the Personal Cyber Protection Gap,” from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) and Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB), a Munich Re company.
The average payout for a home cyber claim is over $10,000, the new report found.
While consumer concerns used to be limited to financial accounts and identity theft, there are now opportunities to hack wherever there is an internet-connected device, including doorbells, thermostats, and security cameras. If a device is connected to the web, it can be infected with malware and collect information to be used by bad actors.
The risks have become a hot topic, particularly since the rise of “deepfake” technology and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).
“As digital lifestyles evolve and become more interconnected, so do the risks,” said Neil Rekhi, product manager, personal cyber insurance, HSB, in the report. “The pace of personal cyber threats is increasing at an accelerating rate, and personal cyber insurance is one way to protect against these increasing risks.”
The Cyber Coverage Gap
Cyber insurance is one of the fastestgrowing property/casualty segments. The proliferation and potential severity of
personal cyber threats has forced insurers to clarify policy coverage and exclusions, improve risk managers’ understanding of product value, and better manage costs and rate stability. While 84% of the agents and brokers surveyed said they understand the value of personal cyber insurance, only 43% believe their clients share the same understanding.
The majority of agents (77%) say they have presented personal lines cyber insurance to clients at least once in the last month, but 56% of agents report that clients don’t understand or see the value of cyber insurance. Most agents (71%) said the price and breadth of coverage were clients’ most important criteria for purchasing personal cyber insurance.
While most agents understand the value of personal cyber coverage, only 73% said they are comfortable explaining it to clients and only 68% are comfortable selling the coverage.
“The disconnect between agent/broker and consumer perceptions of personal cyber risk—and the role of insurance in
addressing it—is a call to action from insurance professionals,” said Triple-I Chief Insurance Officer Dale Porfilio in the report.
The new report suggests that it will be up to agents and brokers to break new ground and get comfortable confronting consumers about potential risks and available protections.
“Agents need to be prepared to respond to—or, better yet, anticipate—customers’ questions and concerns about exclusions, deductibles, or other policy characteristics that might erode the perceived value of the product,” the report posits. “Agents should be able to explain in detail the breadth of a policy’s coverage, as well as any deductibles or exclusions that might apply.”
“In other words, better educated agents can help consumers be more aware of cyber scams and the importance of personal cyber insurance in protecting their assets. This will help them be less likely to become victims and ensure that they’re protected if they do.”
‘While consumer concerns used to be limited to financial accounts and identity theft, there are now opportunities to hack wherever there is an internet-connected device, including doorbells, thermostats, and security cameras.’
News & Markets
AM Best: US P/C Industry Records $1.1B Underwriting Loss for Q1
Growth in net earned premiums during the first three months of 2025 was offset by losses and expenses, resulting in a $1.1 billion net underwriting loss for the U.S. P/C industry. According to industry rating agency AM Best, the January wildfires in California were to blame for the increase in losses
for personal and commercial insurance lines in the first quarter.
Fitch Ratings said insured losses during the first quarter were an estimated $50 billion, with $38 billion from the California wildfires. The total is $19 billion more than Q1 2024.
Losses incurred during Q1 were about $147.1 billion, up
about 17% from the same period a year ago. Losses and loss adjustment expenses (LAE) were up 15.8% to about $167.5 billion, which significantly offset a 7.8% increase in net premiums earned to $226.3 billion, said AM Best in a first look at industry financial results.
Q1 net investment income of
$20.5 billion was up just 2.4% from Q1 2024.
Net income dropped more than 50% to about $19.8 billion during Q1 2025.
The industry’s combined ratio worsened to 99.4 from 94.4 during Q1 2024. Excluding $9.6 billion of favorable reserve development during Q1, the combined ratio was 103.6, said AM Best.
Fitch said the industry reported net income of $20.1 billion and a combined ratio of 98.8 for Q1 2025.
AM Best said its first-quarter analysis was based on company reports received by May 29. These insurers represent about 96% of both the industry’s total net premiums written and industry surplus, which increased 6.9% to about $1.1 billion.
US Homeowners Insurance Rates Rose 40.4% in Six Years: Report
U.S. homeowners insurance rates rose 40.4% over the past six years, with the biggest increases hitting in the last two years, a new report shows.
LendingTree’s 2025 State of Home Insurance Report shows rates from 2019 through 2021 remained stable, with increases of 2% in 2019, 2.1% in 2020, and 3% in 2021. Then rates started rising in 2022 with increases of 5.4%, 11% in 2023, and 11.4% in 2024.
The average annual cost of home insurance across the U.S. is now $2,801. The most expensive states for homeowners insurance are Oklahoma ($6,133), Nebraska ($5,912), and Kansas ($5,412), according to the report.
Hawaii has the lowest average rate at $632, followed by California ($1,260) and Vermont ($1,339), the report shows.
The states with the largest rate increases between 2019 and 2024 were: Colorado (76.6%), Nebraska (72.3%), and Utah (70.6%).
Colorado’s increase was partly due to an uptick in billion-dollar natural disaster events. There were 24 between 2019 and 2024. Nebraska experienced 25 natural catastrophes, and Utah has seen growing losses from disasters in wildfire-prone areas, the report shows.
Other key findings
in the report:
• Montana and Nebraska saw the largest jumps in home insurance rates in 2024, both at 22.1%. Minnesota and Washington each saw an increase of 19.5%.
• The smallest rate increases in 2024 included Florida (1.7%), Texas (3.4%), and New York (3.8%).
• States with the smallest
cumulative increases from 2019 to 2024 were Vermont (12.2%), Alaska (12.9%), and Maine (17.9%).
LendingTree’s analysis is based on home insurance data from Quadrant Information Services, sourced from insurer filings, and RateWatch from S&P Global. The analysis used standard coverage amounts and deductibles unless otherwise noted.
The following coverages and deductibles were used:
• $400,000 dwelling coverage
• $40,000 other structures
• $200,000 personal property
• $80,000 loss of use coverage
• $100,000 liability
• $5,000 medical payments
• $1,000 deductible
US Commercial Lines Prices Up 5.3%, Continue Downward Trend: WTW CLIPS
U.S. commercial insurance rates went up again in first-quarter 2025, according to the latest findings from WTW’s Commercial Lines Insurance Pricing Survey (CLIPS).
Carriers reported an aggregate price increase of 5.3% during the first three months of 2025—down from increases of 5.6% and 6.1% for the fourth and third quarters of 2024.
The aggregate price increase for the first quarter of 2024 was 6.3%.
“Overall, the continued reduction in rate increases is a very positive sign for buyers,” said Yi Jing, senior director of insurance consulting and technology at WTW.
However, Jing added, “consistent double-digit rate jumps for areas like commercial auto signify continued pricing difficult in the market. The only other coverage area maintaining double-digit rate increases is excess/umbrella liability.”
In Q4 2024, excess and umbrella liability recorded its highest price increase in the past three years, and commercial auto recorded its highest
For Q1 2025, commercial auto had the largest downward movement from the prior quarter among all surveyed lines.
Commercial property continued a strong downward
pricing trend, with just a small increase during Q1 2025, after large price increases were seen in 2023.
Forty-one participating insurers representing approximately 20% of the U.S. commercial insurance market
(excluding state workers compensation funds) contributed data to the survey.
WTW’s CLIPS data is based on new and renewal business figures obtained directly from carriers underwriting the business.
40.4%
The amount U.S. homeowners insurance rates rose over the past six years, with the biggest increases hitting in the last two years. LendingTree’s 2025 State of Home Insurance Report shows rates from 2019 through 2021 remained stable, with increases of 2% in 2019, 2.1% in 2020, and 3% in 2021. Then rates started rising in 2022, with increases of 5.4%, 11% in 2023, and 11.4% in 2024.
$5,000
A tax break proposed by Missouri lawmakers to offset the cost of property insurance deductibles. In the wake of a May 16 tornado, lawmakers approved $100 million of open-ended aid for St. Louis and $25 million for emergency housing assistance in any areas covered under requests for presidential disaster declarations. State budget director Dan Haug said the deductible provision could eventually cost up to $600 million.
$10,000
The amount awarded to a New Orleans, Louisiana, family by jury in federal court after a city police officer shot and killed their Catahoula Leopard puppy. The court found the officer had violated the puppy owners’ constitutional rights but was shielded from punishment under qualified immunity because of his government role. The jury awarded $10,000 in damages for emotional distress to the puppy’s owners, to be paid by the city. An additional $400 was awarded for the rescue dog’s market value.
Declarations
FEMA Farewell?
“This just means you should not expect to see FEMA on the ground unless it’s 9/11, Katrina, Superstorm Sandy.”
— Carrie Speranza, who used to advise the agency and is now president of the U.S. Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers, commenting on “Abolishing FEMA,” the memo addressed from then-acting FEMA head Cameron Hamilton to his bosses at the Department of Homeland Security. The memo outlines a number of functions that “should be drastically reformed, transferred to another agency, or abolished in their entirety,” possibly as soon as late 2025. Potential changes included eliminating long-term housing assistance for disaster survivors, halting enrollments in the National Flood Insurance Program, and providing smaller amounts of aid for fewer incidents.
Better Battery Boom
“Batteries are very good at handling these types of events. Things have gotten a lot better than a couple years ago.”
— Andrew Gilligan, director of commercial strategy at Fluence Energy Inc., a battery developer with three storage sites in Texas. When temperatures recently climbed to seasonal levels not seen in over a century, power demand surged. Meanwhile, scores of natural gas-powered generators were offline, getting tuned up for summer. Battery banks kicked in to cover 8% of demand, keeping power flowing. In the 12 months through April, energy storage in the U.S. rose from roughly 18 gigawatts to 25 gigawatts, a 41% increase, according to a Bloomberg Green analysis of federal data.
Record Fire Risk
“Don’t say this is going to be the worst fire season. You say that every year.”
— Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, jokingly, to State Forester and Fire Warden Kacey KC at a June wildfire briefing in Carson City, Nevada. KC’s cautious forecast for the coming fire season didn’t quite comply with the governor’s request. The state is “abnormally dry for this time of year,” she told him, primarily because of minimal snow at lower elevations during the winter followed by a warm spring that rapidly melted the snowpack at higher elevations. The annual briefing brought together a conglomeration of agencies and groups, including the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Nevada National Guard, and city, county, and tribal representatives.
The Right to Invest
“We are very happy with the resolution and Bally’s decision not to use race in this investment. This case should serve as a warning to other companies that hope to dole out investment opportunities based on race. It is illegal, and we’ll fight it wherever we can.”
— Attorney Dan Lennington, who represented Richard Fisher, Phillip Aronoff, and the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) in a discrimination case against gaming company Bally. Bally initially offered a 25% stake in a Chicago development to only women and minority investors to win the casino license from the Illinois city in 2022. The suit claimed the men's civil rights had been violated because they were white men.
Reining in Rates
“With factors such as distracted driving, excessive speeding, and increased automobile repair costs putting upward pressure on insurance rates, I am happy that we were able to hold the average increase to 5%.”
— North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey commenting on the state’s automobile insurance rates, which are poised to increase statewide by a 5% average this fall. The settlement is lower than the average 22.6% rate increase for private passenger vehicles that had been initially requested in February by the North Carolina Rate Bureau, which represents insurance companies. The agreement also includes an average statewide 16.3% decrease on motorcycle liability insurance rates. The rate changes will take effect on new and renewed policies starting Oct. 1.
Lower Coverage Costs for Cabbies
“For years, New York City’s for-hire drivers have been crushed by an unjust, outdated insurance mandate that inflated costs, limited their options, and unleashed widespread fraud. In the middle of an affordability crisis, drivers were stuck paying the price for a broken system. But today, the Council came through.”
— New York City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa on the June 11 vote to lower for-hire vehicles’ per-person personal injury protection (PIP) coverage from a minimum limit of $200,000 to $100,000 and prohibiting the Taxi and Limousine Commission from requiring those licensed in the city to have PIP liability coverage over 200% of what's required for drivers elsewhere in the state.
Business Moves
National
Brown & Brown, Accession Risk Management
Brown & Brown Inc. has entered into an agreement to buy Accession Risk Management, the parent company of the specialty brokerage firm Risk Strategies and wholesaler One80 Intermediaries, for about $9.8 billion.
Daytona Beach, Florida-based Brown & Brown will purchase RSC Topco Inc., the holding company for Boston-based Accession—one of the largest privately held brokerages in the U.S.
After the close of the transaction, expected in the third quarter, the Risk Strategies team will become part of Brown & Brown’s retail segment. Accession CEO John Mina will join the retail senior leadership team.
Accession, founded in 1997, has over 5,300 employees in the U.S. and Canada and reported revenue of approximately $1.7 billion in 2024.
Brown & Brown, the seventh largest global broker with nearly $4.3 billion in revenue, according to AM Best’s 2024 ranking, enters the recent M&A action from the world’s top brokers.
Midwest
Risk Strategies, Schroeder Insurance
Risk Strategies acquired Schroeder Insurance, a Missouri-based firm with a specialty focus in the commercial lines and private client sectors. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Led by brothers Paul and Ted Schroeder, who each have over 30 years of industry experience, Schroeder Insurance’s business is closely split between commercial and private clients. The agency has specialty experience in hospitality, the public sector, and emergency response organizations, among others.
Schroeder Insurance traces its beginnings back to 1953 and founding partners A.C. Schroeder and Charles H. Schroeder. Its two offices in Union and Washington are located just west of St. Louis, Missouri.
In Missouri alone, Risk Strategies has recently acquired Thomas McGee Group, Stephens & Associates, and Beattie & Associates, all based in St. Louis and Kansas City.
Taylor Oswald Moves Headquarters to Cleveland, Ohio
Taylor Oswald, a provider of group benefits and property and casualty insurance, announced it is relocating its corporate headquarters in Cleveland.
With the move, Taylor Oswald joins its partner, Oswald Companies, at Oswald Tower on the East Bank of the Flats. Taylor Oswald said the move triples its office footprint and deepens its commitment to Cleveland.
Taylor Oswald President and CEO Eddie Taylor said the move allows the company to tap into the local talent pool and maintain strong ties with the community.
Taylor Oswald is an insurance advisor in the areas of property and casualty, employee benefits, retirement plan services, personal and family risk management,
life insurance and wealth preservation. In 2025, it also expanded to provide workers’ compensation third-party administration.
Ryan Specialty, JM Wilson
Ryan Specialty signed a definitive agreement to acquire the business of JM Wilson Corporation. JM Wilson is based in Michigan and its operations will become part of RT Binding Authority, the binding authority specialty of Ryan Specialty.
Founded in 1920, JM Wilson has six offices throughout the United States. The business has a broad range of offerings, including products ranging from personal lines to surety, and is well known for its expertise in transportation. JM Wilson generated approximately $19 million of operating revenue for the 12 months ended January 31.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2025. Philo Smith served as exclusive financial advisor to JM Wilson.
South Central
Artemis Insurance, Tyner Jeter Insurance
Artemis Insurance, the parent brand of Texan Insurance, Ozark Insurance, and Marek Insurance, announced the acquisition of Baton Rouge-based Tyner Jeter Insurance.
Formerly part of McInnis Tyner Agency since 1972, the team launched Tyner Jeter Insurance in August 2012.
Earlier this year Artemis expanded into Louisiana by partnering with Ozark Insurance. Kyle Watson, managing partner for Ozark Insurance, will expand his role to oversee both Louisiana-based agencies.
Southeast
Unison Risk Advisors, Hatcher Insurance
The Orlando, Florida-based boutique agency and brokerage Hatcher Insurance is now part of Unison Risk Advisors.
Hatcher, founded almost 80 years ago, offers property and liability insurance, surety bonding, employee benefits, and personal insurance services. Billy Palmer, Bryan Robertson, and Cory Broadaway acquired the brokerage in 2020. They will
continue with the firm under Unison, the companies said.
The addition of Hatcher complements Unison’s 2023 partnership with Miamibased NSI Insurance Group.
Unison Risk Advisors was formed in 2020 with the merger of Cleveland-based Oswald Companies and RCM&D of Baltimore. It is headquartered in Cleveland and has over 1,200 employees across 25 offices. Robert Klonk is chairman and chief executive officer.
Patriot Growth Services, Brennan & Co.
Brennan & Co. insurance agency, based in Savannah, Georgia, is now part of Patriot Growth Services, a brokerage and insurance services firm that has grown rapidly since its founding in 2019. Patriot Growth has its headquarters in Pennsylvania and operates 170 offices nationwide.
Brennan began business in 2005, specializing in commercial marine insurance, including coverage for terminals, stevedores, shipyards, and towing, dredging and marine construction firms. The firm also offers property-casualty coverage and employee benefits services. It is led by principals Edward Brennan, Austin Denney, and Owen Brennan.
King Risk Partners, Nobles Insurance Agency
King Risk Partners has acquired Nobles Insurance Agency in North Carolina.
Nobles, with offices in Raleigh, Clayton, and other cities, has been in business for almost 60 years, binding life, homeowners, auto, and commercial insurance plans. Terry Nobles Jr. is owner of the agency. King Risk, based in Gainesville, Florida, has operated since 1974 and has expanded steadily in recent years through acquisitions across the eastern United States.
CRC Group Rebrands BenefitMall
Three years after it purchased BenefitMall, Alabama-based CRC Group is rebranding its employee benefits division as CRC Benefits.
The change marks a significant step in aligning the division with CRC Group's broader go-to-market strategy and will include a new logo. CRC Benefits will offer
a comprehensive wholesale employee benefits platform and will continue to work with agencies nationwide.
CRC Group, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is an independent insurance wholesaler founded in the 1980s.
The group is part of Truist Insurance Holdings. CRC acquired Dallas-based BenefitMall, a wholesale benefits general agency, in September 2022.
West
Hub International Ltd., Wycoff Insurance Agency Inc.
Hub International Ltd., headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, acquired the assets of Wycoff Insurance Agency Inc. in Mount Vernon, Washington. Wycoff Insurance will be referred to as Wycoff Insurance Agency, a Hub International company. Chris Eisses, president; Donnie Keltz, vice president, secretary and treasurer; and the Wycoff Insurance team will join Hub Northwest.
Wycoff Insurance is a locally owned insurance agency providing commercial and personal insurance.
Monarch E&S Insurance Services, Market Finders Inc.
Monarch E&S Insurance Services acquired Market Finders Inc. (MFI) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Monarch E&S Insurance Services is a division of Specialty Program Group LLC.
MFI is a managing general agent and wholesale broker founded in 1971. MFI specializes in both personal and commercial lines, including transportation risks, led by President Steve Shaffer.
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., Wilkins & Associates Insurance Services
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, acquired Reno, Nevada-based Wilkins & Associates Insurance Services Inc.
Steve Wilkins, Jared Wilkins, and their team will operate under the direction of Scott Firestone, head of Gallagher’s Southwest region retail property/casualty brokerage operations.
Wilkins & Associates, founded by Tom and Melanie Wilkins, is a retail insurance broker serving commercial and personal lines clients in Reno and western Nevada.
InterWest Insurance Services, headquartered in Sacramento, California, has acquired Armstrong & Associates Insurance Services in the state of California.
Martin Armstrong will remain in a leadership role, with all employees coming over to InterWest.
Founded in 2004, Armstrong specializes in agribusiness and serves clients throughout California and beyond.
Inszone Insurance Services, Denver West Insurance Brokers
Inszone Insurance Services acquired Denver West Insurance Brokers in Golden, Colorado. Denver West Insurance Brokers will retain the same office and team members.
Founded in 2003 by Tina Kiel, Denver West Insurance Brokers is a provider of commercial, personal and benefits insurance services.
Inzone Insurance Services, Evers Insurance LLC
Inszone Insurance Services, headquartered in Sacramento, California, acquired Evers Insurance LLC in Cave Creek, Arizona.
Evers Insurance specializes in commercial insurance, particularly in the garage and auto dealer industries. It was founded in 2011 by Britt Evers. Jake Evers also contributed to the firm's growth as a generalist in commercial lines.
Alliant Insurance Services, Johnson Benefit Planning
Alliant Insurance Services acquired Johnson Benefit Planning in Oregon. The Johnson Benefit Planning team will join Alliant.
Johnson Benefit Planning is an employee benefits consulting firm with offices in Bend and West Linn, Oregon. Alliant is headquartered in Irvine, California.
National Starwind Specialty Insurance Services named Graham Jenks the president of JH Blades Group, which encompasses JH Blades Energy, JH Blades Marine, Southern Marine, and Energy Technical Underwriters. JH Blades is a specialty platform of Starwind Specialty Insurance Services, a CRC Group company headquartered in New York City. Jenks has served as president of Southern Marine for eight years. He previously served at the company as a vice president and marine underwriter. Before joining the company in 2012, Jenks was a marine cargo broker at Price Forbes and Partners.
Richard Martin, long-time leader of JH Blades, has retired following a career spanning many years of service.
Michael Gonzales joined Alliant Insurance Services, headquartered in Irvine, California, as first vice president with the value-based healthcare and risk management solutions team within its employee benefits group. Based in North Carolina, Gonzales will work closely with clients across the healthcare spectrum. Gonzales has over 20 years of experience in business development, sales operations, and go-to-market strategy, as well as 15 years of experience focused on partnering with hospitals, health systems, physician provider groups, and Managed Service Organizations (MSOs). Before joining Alliant, Gonzales most recently served
as vice president of sales at MedEvolve.
Former Willis Group
Holdings CEO Joe Plumeri was named to the new role of chairman at Insurance Advisory Partners (IAP). He will start the role on September 1. Plumeri served as chairman and CEO of Willis Group, beginning in 2000, after previously serving as CEO of Citibank, North America. He then joined KKR & Co., a former investor in Willis Group, as a senior adviser.
York, has elected Kelly Gonyo as chair of the board for the 2025–2026 term. Gonyo is the founder and president of Blue Line Insurance Agency, headquartered in Lake Placid, New York. Gonyo has served on the Big “I” New York Board of Directors since 2020, previously holding the roles of vice chair and secretary/treasurer.
Ryan Specialty, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, has appointed Brad Storey as president of Irwin Siegel Agency (ISA), a social service industryfocused managing general underwriter that is part of the Ryan Specialty Underwriting Managers division of Ryan Specialty. ISA is headquartered in Rock Hill, New York.
Mosaic Insurance, headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda, promoted Yosha DeLong to the new role of global engagement officer and hired cyber and technology liability executive Brian Bonkoski to lead the company’s cyber business.
Based in Chicago, Illinois, DeLong has built Mosaic’s cyber business since the company’s launch in 2021, spanning a global footprint that includes the U.S., Canada, Bermuda, the U.K., Germany, and the United Arab Emirates.
Bonkoski, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the global head of cyber at Mosaic. He has 20 years of experience in underwriting and distribution leadership, with previous executive roles at Chubb and AIG. Most recently, he served as senior vice president and head of field operations at Chubb.
East
Big “I” New York, a trade association for independent insurance agents in New
Also elected to the executive committee was David Borg, who will serve a one-year term as vice chair and secretary/ treasurer. Borg is a past president of Big “I” Suffolk and a former Chair of the Big “I” NY NextGen Committee.
Gonyo and Borg join David Bodenstein (immediate past chair) and Ron Brunell (national director).
Big I New York members also elected regional directors: Lisa Hussainov of Walsh Duffield Companies Inc. in Buffalo, New York, to a two-year term representing the West Central region; Eric Diamond of Marshall & Sterling in Chappaqua to a two-year term representing the East North region; Eileen Frank of J.P. West Inc. in New York, to a two-year representing the Metro Suburban region; and Robert Bleistein of Eastern Classic Coverage Insurance Agency on Long Island, to a two-year term representing the Metro Suburban region.
Big “I” NY’s regional directors are Mike Zwas, Deena McCullough, Emmanuel Osuyah, Rob Bowen Jr., and Doug Benz, and at-large directors are Frank Marullo and Sydney Roe.
Storey has been with the Irwin Siegel business for over 17 years and is currently executive vice president of the managing general underwriter.
With this appointment, Howard Siegel becomes executive chairman of ISA.
Davis & Towle Insurance Group, headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire, named former New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner Christopher (Chris) Nicolopoulos as the agency’s new CEO.
Jeffrey Towle, previously the agency’s president, has been appointed chairman of the board, while his son, Ryan Towle, who was previously vice president, has assumed the role of president.
Nicolopoulos previously served as president and CEO of the New Hampshire Association of Insurance
Graham Jenks
Yosha DeLong
Kelly Gonyo
Brad Storey
Howard Siegel
Chris Nicolopoulos
Agents and New Hampshire’s insurance commissioner. Most recently, he held a regional government affairs position at the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies.
Sandra Margeson has assumed the role of chief financial officer and treasurer.
Lori Tobin is now vice president, personal lines/branch management.
Brian Parsons has been promoted to vice president, sales.
Midwest
– affiliates. He joined Brotherhood Mutual in 2000 as an assistant underwriter and most recently served as assistant vice president, sales and special markets, since 2015. He has also held the positions of property claims adjuster, senior marketing specialist, and manager of the special markets division.
Urbana, Ohio, named four new equity partners. All are based in the Springfield office.
Ben Galbreath has nearly two decades of experience in personal, commercial, life, and supplemental benefits insurance.
Jason Heims has been with Wallace & Turner since 2007, specializing in both personal and commercial lines and overseeing claims management.
Mary Jo Leventhal serves as director of operations and business development.
Frankenmuth Insurance, headquartered in Frankenmuth, Michigan, appointed Kelly Ott as chief legal officer and corporate secretary. Ott is the company’s top legal advisor, overseeing corporate legal matters, governance, and regulatory compliance across all Frankenmuth Insurance companies and subsidiaries.
Ott has over 30 years of experience in private practice and in-house legal leadership. She previously served as legislative and regulatory counsel and managing attorney for claims litigation at State Farm, as vice president and assistant general counsel at Horace Mann, and most recently as vice president and counsel at The Hanover Group.
Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company, headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, made three executive team changes.
Gabe Brown was named vice president, sales and operations – Brotherhood Works
Drew Smith is now vice president of marketing. He joins Brotherhood Mutual after over 27 years with American Specialty Insurance & Risk Services, Inc., where he served as vice president, client services, and chief marketing officer and was president of the company for over nine years. He most recently served as a senior advisor.
O’Day has over 20 years of public service experience in Oregon, previously serving as the deputy director of the Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs, executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Council of Governments, general counsel for the League of Oregon Cities, deputy city attorney and deputy city manager for Salem, deputy legal counsel to the Office of the Governor, and law clerk to the chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court.
Myles Trempe is a second-generation Wallace & Turner employee, handling both personal and commercial lines coverage.
Southeast
TK Keen, deputy insurance commissioner and administrator of DCBS’ Division of Financial Regulation, will serve as acting insurance commissioner. Keen has led several National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ working groups. Before joining the division, he practiced law as a sole practitioner in Washington, with a focus on employment law cases.
Mitzi Thomas has had a 30-year career with Brotherhood Mutual, where she has served as vice president of marketing for the past 12 years.
With plans to retire at the end of 2025, Thomas has stepped into the role of vice president and marketing advisor. She previously served as marketing communications manager, assistant vice president of corporate communications.
Wallace & Turner Inc., located in Springfield and
Lake Mary, Florida-based Trident Reciprocal Exchange, launched in 2024, named Ryan Hodges as CEO. Hodges has 25 years in the property and casualty insurance business and was previously vice president of commercial insurance for Bankers Insurance Group. Hodges also worked as a commercial underwriting manager for Citizens Property Insurance Corp.
West
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek named Sean O’Day as acting director of the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS). O’Day is currently the deputy director for DCBS.
He replaces Andrew R. Stolfi, who the Oregon State Senate recently confirmed to be the director of the Oregon Employment Department. Stolfi presently serves as both the DCBS director and the Oregon insurance commissioner.
Coalition, headquartered in San Francisco, California, hired Ilsa Derfus as its director of capacity. Derfus is responsible for managing relationships with carrier partners and will serve as the primary point of contact for all capacity-related matters.
Derfus joins Coalition from McGill & Partners, where she was a partner and previously worked with Coalition and other clients in a reinsurance brokerage capacity. In the decade before McGill, Derfus served as an associate director at Aon Benfield and a pro-rata technician at Guy Carpenter.
Kelly Ott
Isla Derfus
Mitzi Thomas
Drew Smith
Gabe Brown
News & Markets
Verisk: Q1 Claims Volume Hits 5-Year Low but Severity Up on Wildfire Losses
By Ezra Amacher
The first three months of 2025 brought devastating wildfires to California, significant wind and hail events to Texas, and substantial increases in tornado activity to “Tornado Alley,” but claim volume decreased to a five-year low, according to a quarterly property report from Verisk.
The findings in Verisk’s “Quarterly Property Report January–March 2025” show that claims severity rose due to the California wildfires while property claims continued a downward trend that began in 2023.
Claims costs skyrocketed in the first three months, with the national average replacement cost value (RCV) increasing 46% compared to the same period a year ago. The increase in RCV was primarily driven by the Palisades and Eaton fires, which generated approximately 48,000 claims totaling roughly $10 billion, Verisk found.
California experienced a 1,805% increase in RCV from Q1 2024 to 2025, the report found. The average claims estimate from the wildfires was $337,000.
This extreme increase in RCV was counterbalanced in the first quarter by the fact that 33 states experienced a decrease in severity from the same quarter in 2024, the report said. Maine, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon saw an average 80-95% decrease in severity.
Total claim volume for the quarter was down about 7%. The decrease came primarily from non-catastrophe claims, while catastrophe claims stayed steady, Verisk found.
Texas led the country in claim volume with 161,000 claims. California had the next highest with 96,600, followed by Florida (48,500), Missouri (48,200), North Carolina (36,000), and Pennsylvania (35,700).
Texas accounted for 95% of all Q1 catastrophe (CAT) events, driven by wind and hail events. Several other states
saw significant increases in CAT claims, the study found, ranging from 45% in Oklahoma to over 200% in Kentucky and Nebraska. Most of these CAT claim increases were from wind and hail claims tied to tornadoes, the study said.
Many states, including those in the Pacific Northwest, saw a drop-off in CAT claims. Washington had a 99% decrease in freeze claims, Oregon had a 98% decrease in ice and snow claims, and Maine had a 98% decrease in wind claims from 2024 to 2025, the report found.
Verisk found that billable labor costs slowed in the first quarter. Labor costs increased 1.06% across the United States compared to 1.42% in the previous quarter.
The report cautioned that U.S. immigration and tariff policies could also have a potential impact on construction and material costs. The construction industry relies heavily on imported materials (28% of lumber, 24% of concrete, 36% of gypsum) and immigrant workers (26% of the workforce), the report said.
News & Markets
Insurance Sector Should Be on the Lookout for ‘Scattered Spider’ Hackers
By Chad Hemenway
Watch out, insurance industry. A well-known cybercrime group appears to have shifted focus to insurers.
Apparently, recent cybersecurity incidents at Erie Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance Cos., and Aflac are indicative of a trend. The largely decentralized hacking group known as Scattered Spider have switched focus from retailers to insurance companies, according to Google Threat Intelligence Group.
“Actors that bear the hallmarks of Scattered Spider are now targeting the insurance industry,” John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google’s Mandiant, posted to X. “They have a habit of working their way through a sector. Insurance companies should be on the lookout for social engineering schemes targeting their call centers.”
Scattered Spider, partnering with ran-
somware-as-a-service group DragonForce, had in recent months been concentrating on the retail sector in the U.S. and U.K., causing havoc to Whole Foods supplier United Natural Foods, Marks & Spencer, Co-op, Adidas, The North Face, Cartier, and Victoria’s Secret, among others.
Since Hultquist’s first post on the cybercrime group’s change in industry focus, the U.S. has bombed Iran—raising some concern that retaliation could include cyberattacks. Even with the increased cyber threat from Iran, Hultquist said the “threat I lose sleep over is Scattered Spider.”
“They are already taking food off shelves and freezing businesses. The Iranian hackers may not even have Internet access, but these kids are in play right now,” he posted.
Keith Wojcieszek, global head of threat intelligence at Kroll, told Insurance Journal he recently received some infor-
mation that one insurer was the victim of phishing, which gained access to the company’s information technology. The hackers then use the information they can see to research the company’s hierarchy and fuel social engineering efforts.
Like the retail sector, insurers have a huge amount of valuable personally identifiable information and financial data to store, use, and sell. Also, insurers have information on insureds, which may be used to identify the next targets, according to Wojcieszek.
“These attacks may be about money, but there could also be a two-prong approach,” he said, explaining that insurers now gather a lot of information on companies in order to insure them. “The network security of each company—[insurers] are so detailed on the cybersecurity each company has. What a wealth of knowledge to have to know how to attack the next company or industry, or develop tools to go in and attack.”
Spotlight: Claims
Wildfire Experience Inspires New Contents Claims Insurtech
By Allen Laman
When Michael Balarezo emerged from the basement office of his Boulder, Colorado, home in December 2021, smoke plumes from the nearby Marshall Fire were visible from his driveway. Balarezo, his wife, and daughter swiftly stowed emergency clothing, sensitive documents, and toys into duffel bags and loaded them in the back of their car.
“And we say bye to our home,” Balarezo said, “because we think it’s going to go in flames.”
Eighty-mile-per-hour wind gusts whipped debris through the air. The smoke thickened and limited visibility to distances shorter than half a
When the flames subsided, the house was one of the lucky survivors in the Balarezos’ neighborhood. But soot and ash flooded into the home through doors believed to be opened by emergency personnel. The entire main level and upstairs bedroom needed to be gutted.
Two years after leaving, Balarezo and his family moved back in. It took a lot of time to work with all the parties needed to get everything fixed,
he said. A former insurance claims adjuster himself, the process gave Balarezo a new perspective on how much policyholders go through when disaster strikes.
He described the experience as chaotic. Family arguments erupt over how much time repairs are taking, he said.
Stress arises when policyholders wonder why the resolution is dragging on and why they haven’t heard from their insurance company. Living in a townhome, Balarezo spoke of issues that can surface when alignment is needed with neighbors on contractors and services.
“It’s almost like working a full-time job on top of the
full-time job that you have,” he said of the repair process.
The idea for Adjusto, his new contents claims platform, didn’t hit Balarezo until the very end of this claim. He and his wife told their daughter that they could finally return home. After hearing the news, she began sobbing as all the emotions of the previous two years were released. She was happy it was over and ready to move on.
“That moment, it hit me really hard, personally,” Balarezo said. “She shouldn’t have to suffer through all of this. And it made me realize that she witnessed mom and dad arguing and fighting over the claim. She witnessed
football field.
News & Markets
Wildfire Season Preview: Rest of 2025
Is High-Risk, May Follow LA Wildfires Paradigm
Following the “paradigm-shifting” Los Angeles wildfires in January, the 2024-2025 wildfire season will be remembered as a turning point for the insurance industry, and a warning that “wildfire is no longer a seasonal or rural phenomenon,” a new outlook asserts.
The rest of 2025 poses severe wildfire risk in numerous states thanks to developing drought conditions, including high risk in wildfire-prone California, according to a report from ZestyAI.
The L.A. wildfires killed 29 people, and damaged or destroyed thousands of properties. The fallout of the fires included large losses for major California insurers, including State Farm. The carrier is asking the California Department of Insurance to approve a large rate increase. According to the California Department of Insurance, 37,749 claims have been filed related to the fires and $12.1 billion has been paid out.
However, the wildfire perils weren’t only in California.
“From New Mexico, where one of the state’s most destructive wildfires validated early high-risk forecasts, to blazes in the Midwest and Southeast, the 2024
season revealed wildfire’s expanding geographic footprint, relentless pace, and increasingly unpredictable behavior,” the report stated. “For insurance carriers, it exposed the limits of legacy models still tied to historical fire perimeters or broad geographic zones, and accelerated adoption of next-generation tools that assess parcel-level vulnerability—including structural features, defensible space, and vegetation overhang.”
The rest of the year is shaping up to be more volatile following a moderate 2024 wildfire season. Severe drought conditions are expected to return and spread across the country, with intensified dryness in the Southwest and deep into the Northern Rockies and the Plains, according to the report.
“Heavy rains in California, Oregon, and Washington during the past two years have driven significant vegetation growth. If heat and dryness persist into late summer as forecasted, these areas could once again become highly combustible,” the report states. “This familiar pattern, where wet years boost fuel loads that turn dangerous when conditions shift, remains a long-term
driver of wildfire risk in these historically vulnerable states.”
The report notes that states like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado remain in multi-year droughts, while Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota are emerging as new high-risk zones due to a dry, snow-starved winter and unusually warm spring. Drought signals are also coming out of Texas and Florida, according to the report.
The report also touches on how new state rules and laws are reshaping how insurers are assessing and communicating risk:
In late 2024, the California Department of Insurance finalized its Sustainable Insurance Strategy, a reform to stabilize the state’s insurance market. Central to the strategy is the approval of forward-looking catastrophe models in rate filings—allowing insurers to price wildfire risk based on future exposure rather than past losses.
In 2025, Colorado enacted House Bill 25-1182, establishing a new benchmark for transparency in wildfire risk modeling. The law applies to all admitted carriers and the FAIR Plan. It requires insurers to disclose how wildfire models impact rates, recognize both property- and community-level mitigation efforts, notify policyholders annually of their risk scores and discounts and provide an appeals process for disputed scores.
In 2024, Washington adopted new regulations aimed at improving transparency around insurance premium increases. Insurers are required to notify policyholders that they may request a written explanation for any increase in their homeowners or auto insurance premiums. Upon request, carriers must provide a rationale within 20 days.
In April, Oregon passed Senate Bill 83, repealing the state’s mandatory wildfire hazard map following sustained public opposition. The original map had classified properties into risk zones that triggered defensible space requirements and stricter building codes—measures that some property owners argued were based on incomplete or inaccurate data and had unintended consequences on insurance availability and property values.
mom and dad talking with the insurance company or with the adjusters, trying to figure out how we can move forward and being aggravated.”
All the stress impacted her. And Balarezo didn’t think that was fair.
“That moment is when I thought, ‘I feel like I can do something about this,’” Balarezo said. “Someone should do something about this.”
FairMatch platform provides fast, accurate, and automated personal property valuation for carriers, MGAs, TPAs, and adjusting firms at scale and provides “new ways for adjusters to collaborate with policyholders to resolve claims quickly while building trust.”
He felt the time was right to combine his policyholder experience, adjuster know-how, and decade of software engineering expertise. Adjusto was formed in April 2024 and was publicly announced in March 2025.
After months of beta testing, Adjusto launched FairMatch, an AI-powered platform.
Rather than rushing to replace items through vendor catalogs or shopping links, Adjusto’s FairMatch gives adjusters the tools to determine what people are truly owed and deliver it with clarity and care, according to the Adjusto release on June 18.
Balarezo said Adjusto’s new
FairMatch accepts handwritten, spreadsheet-based, or in-platform item lists and automates line-by-line matching to likekind-and-quality (LKQ) items that adjusters and policyholder can agree on. Adjusto says the platform also automates depreciation and valuation logic, as well as settlement prep and flag reviews—automating 85% of the heavy lifting for adjusters and giving them the space to provide a personalized and empathetic claims experience.
Professional Background
Balarezo became an all-lines claims adjuster after college. His future father-in-law worked as head of an auto salvage team, and he tipped Balarezo off to an opening at Oklahoma Farm Bureau Insurance.
Balarezo enjoyed the investigative nature of the job. He liked digging into claims during his three years in the role.
“Also, I enjoyed the fact that I got to help people as part of my day-to-day [duties],” he said.
Balarezo ultimately pursued his dream of becoming a software engineer and moved to Silicon Valley to build automation solutions for companies including Google, Amazon, and Disney. Still, he carried the lessons he learned in insurance with him.
‘I think there’s too many tools in the market that just complete tasks but don’t actually resolve the issues of claims.’
Balarezo recalled working extensively to defend auto insurance policyholders in third-party arbitration during his time as a claims adjuster. He’d review police reports, have deep conversations with affected parties, and give the process his all until the very end.
Seeing things through is
also a core tenet of software engineering.
“Because [in] software engineering, you fail a lot, very quickly,” Balarezo explained.
“And you kind of need this resilience to just keep on going. And it ended up proving to be a skill that I learned in adjusting that I was able to put into practice as a software engineer professionally.”
Balarezo launched Adjusto and returned to insurance 12 years after leaving Oklahoma Farm Bureau. To his surprise, not much had changed. He spoke with many adjusters and other industry folks to understand the problems they faced, and he learned that some of the processes he was familiar with were exactly the same.
Adjusto
Before forming Adjusto, Balarezo set out to identify real problems that claims professionals face. He took paid time off from his job to attend insurance industry events to understand pain points and make connections.
Meanwhile, he also reopened his old phonebook and began reconnecting with contacts from his adjusting days and continued on page 26
Adjusto Co-Founders Michael Balarezo, James Terry, and Reid Greer
Spotlight: Claims
interviewed neighbors who had struggled to settle claims. Balarezo and his team found that a lack of transparency is eroding policyholder trust.
They noted the frustration that policyholders feel about delays and the expectations they have of how claims should be settled. And the Adjusto team recognized the need for improved data accuracy and valuation in the claims process.
The new FairMatch platform is designed to be used by anyone who services contents claims. That includes carriers, MGAs, TPAs, independent adjusters, and other contents specialists. Balarezo said the company brings a science-based approach to its solution, which is deeply rooted in data science, machine learning, and statistics.
“We like to focus on building solutions that actually are meant to solve the actual problems,” Balarezo said. “I think there’s too many tools in the market that just complete tasks but don’t actually resolve the issues of claims.”
‘We automate what doesn’t require human attention, and we create transparency across the board so that everyone from policyholders to carriers can move forward with clarity and confidence.’
They certainly don’t help adjusters build trust with
policyholders, he said, and the quality of the data and responses back to policyholders need a “tremendous amount of improvement.”
He said that overall, the claims process and experience are broken. The Adjusto team believes the contents claims arena is simultaneously one of the most under-innovated and high-friction areas in insurance.
“We surface critical information faster to the adjuster,” Balarezo said. “We automate what doesn’t require human attention, and we create transparency across the board so that everyone from policyholders to carriers can move forward with clarity and confidence.”
Adjusto aims to turn moments of potential friction into trust-building opportuni-
ties for adjusters, which ultimately turns into decreasing churn and increasing loyalty. The platform is designed to be intuitive, friendly, and fast, Balarezo said, freeing up space for adjusters to focus on empathizing with policyholders and rebuilding that trust.
“I think that’s the big thing that tooling is missing today,” Balarezo added. “Adjusters largely can’t really trust the output that comes out of it. I’ve had conversations where adjusters literally have to go back and then redo their work because the automation that’s built into it just isn’t accurate. It’s not intelligent.”
Go Deeper
Claims of any size and scale can benefit from FairMatch, Balarezo said.
He explained that the Adjusto team thinks of itself as a thought leader, partner, and trusted advisor to the company’s clients. They deeply understand enterprise structure and process, he said, and they also understand the needs of smaller companies.
“What that means is for us, we very intentionally built our software in a way to fit directly into an existing tech stack with minimal friction,” Balarezo explained, pointing to Adjusto’s seamless integration and rapid onboarding.
He later added that Adjusto is “here to be a partner and help modernize. We’re ready to roll up our sleeves and help lay the groundwork for the future.”
This article was originally published in Carrier Management but has been updated to reflect the new launch of Adjusto’s FairMatch platform. continued from page 25
My New Markets
Entertainment
Market Detail: Greenwood’s Entertainment commercial insurance program offers tailored coverage with a minimum premium starting at $1,500, catering to a diverse range of businesses and venues, including auditoriums, theaters, axe throwing venues, bowling alleys, campgrounds, RV parks, convention and performing arts centers, country clubs, tennis clubs, golf clubs, escape rooms, equestrian centers, family entertainment and amusement centers, firearm stores, go-karting facilities, batting cages, mini golf courses, gyms, fitness centers, hunt clubs, museums, paintball and laser tag facilities, race tracks, ATV parks, rage rooms, resorts, shooting ranges, special events, tourist attractions, zoos, and aquariums.
Each class benefits from specialized coverage to address the unique risks associated with entertainment and leisure activities.
Submission Requirements: ACORD
Commercial Insurance application and General Liability application, including comprehensive descriptions of operations/ exposures, signed and dated by the insured upon binding. Supplemental application, as required, signed and dated by the insured at the time of binding. Five-year loss runs for currently valued company, including descriptions for losses exceeding $10,000. Information from website.
Available Limits: Not disclosed.
Carrier: Kinsale; non-admitted; rated A by AM Best.
States: Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Contact: Catherine Mcmackin, Catherine@ gwgeneral.com, 626-817-9100 x 515.
Tech E&O
Market Detail: Built for modern specialty. Anzen simplifies executive and specialty risk—fast. Anzen combines deep underwriting expertise, AI-powered tools, and access to 70+ markets to help brokers quote, compare, and close with speed and precision. The company has led retail distribution, built tech companies, and
shaped executive risk programs across every stage of growth. Anzen brings it all together, so clients don’t have to choose between scale, service, or speed. Backed by top investors in both tech and insurance and trusted by 40+ founders and executives nationwide.
Available Limits: Not disclosed.
Carrier: Not disclosed.
States: All 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Market Detail: Thimble makes it easy to cover a wide range of food, beverage, and restaurant businesses—especially those seeking fast, flexible, and affordable coverage. Whether a client runs a food truck or a neighborhood café, Thimble can help! What Thimble covers (eligible for GL, BOP, and WC—depending on business class and state availability): bakery cafés, cookie stores, donut shops, and bagel shops; cafés, diners, and bistros; buffets and cafeterias; caterers and catering services; coffee shops, smoothie bars, and juice bars; delis and sandwich shops; fast food restaurants and limited-service eateries; family-style and full-service restaurants; ice cream, frozen yogurt, or custard shops; food trucks, lunch wagons, and mobile food vendors—food stands, kiosks, and concessionaires; pretzel stands and snack carts; pizza parlors and pizzerias (excluding hired/non-owned auto liability); food service contractors (cafeteria, institutional, or industrial) and restaurants with alcohol sales under 50% of total receipts.
Coming soon: coffee roasting and tea blending; cheese making and dairy substitute manufacturing; baked goods manufacturing (commercial or smallbatch); confectionery and candy production; nut and snack food processing; spice, sauce, and condiment manufacturing; ice cream and frozen dessert production; juice, soda, and bottled water production (non-alcoholic); and specialty food stores (cheese, chocolate, spices, etc.)
Instant quotes and flexible policy terms. Coverage by the hour, day, month, or year. COIs delivered in minutes.
Available Limits: Not disclosed.
Carrier: Admitted.
States: All 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Contact: Laura Thornton, laura.thornton@ thimble.com, 862-591-3111.
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Renewable energy is growing in the U.S. In fact, wind and solar energy generated more electricity in the U.S. than coal for the first time ever in 2024.
Growth extends far beyond wind and solar, renewable energy insurance experts told Insurance Journal for this special report. There’s growing interest in nuclear energy, hydropower, and geothermal power. And then there’s the expanding industry of power storage to relieve pressure on U.S. power grids during heavy energy months.
One thing is clear: the need for power is growing, and so is the industry that works to protect renewable energy assets.
Fraser McLachlan, CEO of GCube and recently appointed chairman of the newly formed Tokio Marine GX (TMGX), expects significant investment in green energy as the transition to be green takes place across many classes of business and countries worldwide. The investment into green energy is expected to be about $15 trillion in the next 10 years, he said.
“There absolutely is an opportunity to drive this green transition and help this green transition along the way and make some premium out of it, as well,” he said. Launched in May, TMGX, an abbreviation of green transformation, is Tokio Marine Group’s response to the increasing demand for insurance that is critical to transitioning
to a more decarbonized, sustainable society.
The primary driver of “green transformation” is renewable energy. Renewables are growing worldwide, and in the U.S., renewable energy outpaced other energy generation sources in 2024, collectively accounting for about 90% of the United States’ new installed capacity, according to the World Resources Institute.
“With the new projects online, renewables (including wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower) and battery storage now make up 30% of the country’s large-scale power generating capacity,” wrote WRI’s energy specialists Lori Bird, Andrew Light, and Ian Goldsmith in a February 21, 2025, article. “In 2024, all carbon free electricity sources, including nuclear, supplied nearly 44% of electricity, while renewables, including smallscale solar, supplied nearly 25%.”
There are challenges as well as opportunities when it comes to insuring the fast-changing renewable energy world.
One challenge is keeping up with emerging technologies as the renewable energy sector continues to divest in various
segments, McLachlan said. That’s where green energy insurance specialists can help, he said. “Things like hydrogen, small-medium nuclear reactors, new types of solar, new types of electric vehicles—there’s a whole bunch of stuff that is going on that is really not being catered to at the moment by the more traditional insurance providers.”
Solar Differences
Providing suitable insurance to the renewable energy segment, in particular solar energy, can be a tricky thing to get right, said Jason Kaminsky, CEO of kWh Analytics, a managing general agency that writes with Aspen Specialty as well as a panel of reinsurers. Kaminsky, who has spent 25 years working in and around the renewable energy space, including within the insurance industry, said delivering the right insurance coverage for the sector can be “deceptively complicated” to the untrained eye. Products and strategy can change quickly as new technology emerges in the sector, he said.
Solar is the fastest growing energy source in renewables. And for the first time ever, the
U.S. solar industry installed nearly 50 (49.99) GWdc of capacity in 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a nonprofit trade group, and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s a 27% increase from the prior year, reported global energy think tank Ember in its March report, US Electricity 2025 – Special Report. Wind energy increased just 7% from 2023 to 2024.
Insuring large-scale solar facilities takes expertise in the field as climate risks and risk management strategies evolve in the sector, Kaminsky told Insurance Journal. “These facilities can be very large, and if you look at them with an untrained eye, they visually all look very similar,” he said. But that’s far from the case, he said. Solar installations face a wide range of hazards from climate risk but perhaps none as large as hail. According to kWh Analytics’ 2025 Solar Risk Assessment report, hail losses account for 73% of total financial losses despite representing only 6% of loss incidents. That data represents an 8% increase from previous years.
As with other property loss trends, severe convective storm losses are creeping up in geographic locations not traditionally viewed as risky. According to the kWh report, nearly one-fifth (19%) of hail-related losses for solar occurred in North Carolina, an area not considered high risk for hail.
The good news, Kaminsky said, is there are ways to manage these risks. But to do so insurance specialists continued on page 30
Special Report: The Green Issue
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need to convince insureds to make the investment to protect against the risk. That’s the challenge, he said. “There are important decisions that an owner-operator can make that will lead to very different outcomes from a loss event perspective,” he added.
For example, selecting the right solar module is key. “Modules with thicker, tempered glass are less likely to have hail damage,” the kWh Analytics’ report noted. Also key to managing risk is “stow” protocols and equipment. Stowing involves the repositioning the solar panels to a “safe stow position” that will help protect the panels from damage during convective storms with high winds and hail.
While such tools might cost more upfront for solar developers, it’s an important discussion to have with owner-operators as the investments can lead to cost savings in insurance down the road, Kaminsky said.
“That to me is the biggest opportunity,” he said. “We do a lot of education with our brokers and clients around what we call resilience,” he noted. “What decisions could
you make that will lead to a better outcome in the field?”
That means making different decisions on quality during the time of design, he said. The module selection and the glass on that module matter a lot, he added.
“You’re putting glass panels in Texas or in hail zones, and you might look at it and think they all look similar, but there’s important decisions behind the scenes to consider,” he said. Those decisions make a difference both in longevity of the solar product but also on the cost of insurance, he said.
“There’s a lot of opportunity to say, ‘We’re going to build and operate better facilities.’ And where the insurance industry, I think, is catching up is we’ve tried to help with pricing to those differences,” he said. “You should see a pricing impact within your policy” if investments are made, he said.
Data Centers
The building of new data centers hit unprecedented levels in 2024 with new projects totaling over $9 billion last year. That growth trend goes together with the increased demand for power consumption as data
centers are now one of the most energy-intensive building types in the U.S., consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than a typical commercial office building.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023—and that energy consumption is expected to grow by approximately 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028.
“We definitely are seeing some of these large AI data centers looking to provide a self-sustaining, self-power generation facility because they suck so much energy out of the grid,” said Loren Henry, vice president, environmental & energy, for Jencap Specialty Insurance Services.
Henry said the amount of energy consumption makes it cost-prohibitive for these multi-billion-dollar facilities to pull electricity from a local power grid. “So, if they can use hydro, solar, or some sort of renewable energy source to be self-sustaining, they keep their costs down and they’re also not at-risk for electrical failures [from a grid], which has been an issue in some states over the past few years,” he said.
icant amount, relieving some of the stress on local power infrastructure, he added.
McLachlan added that in his experience, while data centers are “incredibly power hungry,” they are “normally owned by companies that have a great desire to want to be green or appear to be green,” he said. That makes this class a good opportunity for the renewable energy insurance market, he added.
“Everybody complains about how polluting the airline industry is to the planet, and you can’t disagree with that. But data centers are more polluting to the planet than [airlines] if you were to combine all of the world’s airlines together,” he said. “Renewable energy can help them.”
Growing Capacity
The growth in the renewable energy sector has led to added interest from insurance markets that have not typically been players in the space, said Kristin Daur, executive vice president, underwriting, at PERse, a managing general underwriter specializing in renewable energy, and part of Ryan Specialty.
“Data centers take huge amounts of electricity to run all the servers and all the equipment that they have,” he added. While renewable energy may not be able to power all the needs of these facilities, it could supply a signif-
“The market’s become awfully congested in a hurry from a competitive landscape standpoint,” she noted.
Daur said some traditional power underwriters entered the renewable space as green energy became more of a buzzword in recent years. “At the same time, renewables have become more and more a part of the energy infrastructure, so companies [insurers] are being mandated to write renewables, whether or not they have the in-house expertise built up quite yet,” she added.
Underwriting, claims, and engineering expertise from lead markets in the space are critical to building sustainable partnerships. Increasingly, risk management seeks that input from insurers to run up the chain through project design and over the life of the project to avert major economic loss.
Daur hopes the influx of capacity into renewal energy insurance doesn’t push the market back into the soft market days of 2016 where rates and underwriting were not sustainable for profitability.
Finding a place where the industry can underwrite for adequate rates that ensure profitability can be a challenge in markets like renewables.
“I think we were at that healthy place, a sustainable place with respect to terms and conditions and really getting
insureds to accept that there is an attritional CAT risk and that is part of the cost of doing business, especially if you’re going to be a solar owner-developer in North Carolina or Texas or California,” said Mark Engel, CEO, marine and energy, Ryan Specialty Underwriting Managers.
“We think we know a bit better now than we did 10 years ago,” he said. “However, now we have these projects, which are five times the size that they were 10 years ago,” Engel added. “And the aggregation is 10 times the amount that it was, so we’re still, as an industry, getting our arms around the size of the expansion and how to optimally manage aggregation.”
Engel said there is a place for expansion in the insurance market to help meet the growing need for added capacity to insure these large facilities but the industry still needs to maintain rate adequacy, so that the business remains profitable.
to see an evolution within the standard markets where they’re separating out and creating an individual underwriting team or platforms specific to renewable energy projects versus the traditional energy market, which was oil and gas,” he said. That’s led to new capacity for his clients. “There’s certainly more coming into the marketplace. Or now they also write renewables.”
Competition and Capital
Additional insurance market
capacity means increased competition—both for new business and experienced talent, said Jatin Sharma, managing partner of NARDA, a specialist renewable energy insurance broker and MGA that writes onand offshore wind, utility, and commercial and industrial solar and battery storage. Sharma says the growing market is driving a flight in underwriter talent.
clearly retaining people has become very difficult,” he said.
The learning curve for underwriting in renewables is quite steep, but the industry’s growing trend has created new opportunities for talent to advance quickly, Sharma said. “One of the interesting dynamics of our marketplace is that this so-called expertise has been developed over a short amount of time,” he said.
“Some people have gone from an underwriting assistant, assistant underwriter, underwriter, senior underwriter, class underwriter to CUO, in five to seven years.” For most people that journey can take 25-30 years, he said.
The volatile interest rate environment for owners and developers in the U.S. is another driver of change in the renewable energy industry.
“So ideally, yes, more capacity in the market can give clients the products that they need and want, but it has to be sustainable underwriting for terms and conditions, with adequate rates. Otherwise, there is potential for renewables to become a loss leading industry,” Engel added. “We’ve still got to underwrite to the merit of the risk.”
Jencap’s Henry said traditional energy markets are dividing their business so that renewable energy stands on its own, a recognition of the specialized nature of the business.
“I think you’re starting
“We’ve seen a substantial amount of movement in the last six months outside of the United States with people job hopping, joining startups, going to new entrants in the space, or those who’ve gone to new entrants in the last couple of years haven’t delivered on their results and are now leaving to go somewhere else,” Sharma said. That talent movement is making it harder for U.S. capacity to compete with the overseas E&S market, according to Sharma.
The trend is particularly noticeable outside the U.S. where a lot more movement in human capital is taking place, he added. “There’s certainly an influx of individuals joining MGAs where they’ve been on the syndicate side or they’ve been on the carrier side, so
“We always look at the marketplace globally because clients want to access supply of capital where it’s the most competitive,” he said. “And at a macro level, we used to have parity between the United States and Europe in terms of the cost of capital, but in the last six to nine months, I would say that the cost of capital has been decreasing outside of the United States because Mr. Powell [Federal Reserve chairman] doesn’t want to reduce the interest rates at the Fed, whereas Europe has been going down substantially.”
That trend trickles down to where the business is moving.
“So, if you have this higher initial base in the U.S. where the cost of capital’s higher, it’s going to make potentially overseas capacity more competitive at a macro level.”
According to Sharma,
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Special Report: The Green Issue
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the amount of new leading capacity has not really changed much but he’s seen an extreme amount of new “follow” capacity enter the renewable energy insurance market. “It’s almost doubled, I’d say, in the last 12 to 24 months,” he said. “We’ve seen more and more markets coming in that are able to follow [a lead carrier], but very few new leads,” he added. “And that’s quite an interesting development because we’re starting to see a little bit more cannibalization of the market.”
BESS Facilities
Another opportunity in the renewables market is the rising use of storage batteries to help stock up energy and help with grid stabilization, especially during the hot summer months where power demands surge.
“The intermittent nature of renewable power generation means that there’s a growing demand to use batteries to balance the grid,” said Ben Sheppard, a renewable energy underwriter at Beazley. “So, when you’re powering things, when there’s sun or wind or what have you, that can go into a battery, which can then be released into the grid more
steadily over a day or over a shorter period of time to balance out the peaks and troughs of usage in a grid system.”
In the 12 months through April—the most recent data available—energy storage in the U.S. surged from roughly 18 gigawatts to 25 gigawatts, a 41% increase, according to a recent Bloomberg Green analysis of federal data. In Arizona, battery storage bandwidth nearly tripled, and in Texas, it has almost doubled. On the evening of April 8, more than 11% of Texas electricity was coming from batteries—a new record, the analysis said.
As a result of this need in the energy market, Sheppard has seen more investment in Battery, Energy Storage Systems, or BESS facilities. “Not only is the entire sector getting bigger, but from an insurance perspective, the risks are growing as well,” he said.
The market for large-scale batteries barely existed a decade ago but has quickly grown. Deployments across the U.S. last year jumped 33% from the year before to 12.3 gigawatts, according to a report from Wood Mackenzie and the American Clean Power
Association trade group. That’s enough electricity for more than nine million homes, although most batteries can only supply power for four or five hours before recharging.
Priscilla Pazmino-Vitela, head of natural resources –Americas for Allianz Commercial, said she is also seeing a lot of BESS projects come to market. “And I think that we will continue seeing that grow, because we need to have reliable energy just to meet the demand that we’re seeing in innovation technology, or data centers,” she said. “We need power for everything, for our daily lives, down to different industries—from manufacturing to technology. We need reliable power,” she said.
For Allianz, the U.S. continues to be a growth market in the renewable space in a variety of areas, PazminoVitela said. “There’s demand for insurance solutions as energy sources are increasingly becoming more diverse,” she said. That could be from solar, wind, and BESS, natural gas or combined, even advanced small nuclear reactors.”
Outlook for Renewable Energy
Another trend that could affect the U.S. renewable energy market is how the federal government addresses clean energy tax credits that were made available through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Inflation Reduction Act credits have helped push hundreds of billions of dollars in new investment into the manufacturing and wide-spread deployment of solar panels, electric vehicles, and other emission reduction technology
since the law’s enactment in August 2022.
McLachlan believes if the credits end up being repealed, the industry will certainly see some new challenges in renewable energy demand.
“But I don’t believe that the U.S. is necessarily as doomy and gloomy as everybody may think,” he said. “I think we will see a little bit of a slowdown in the U.S., but I’m a still great believer in the U.S. and its ability to deliver on the majority of its renewable energy targets. I don’t think that’s a part of the world that’s necessarily going to go away overnight,” McLachlan said.
Jencap’s Henry agrees with that assessment. “I don’t think renewable energy is going away,” he said. “I think it’s too well entrenched into the marketplace now to just have it go by the wayside. There’s a lot of investment in projects that are about to come online, or are in development or in construction phases now, and those will continue.”
While the Trump administration might not be looking to support solar, wind, or hydro projects, they are making a push for nuclear, Henry added. “We are seeing more interest in the small modular nuclear reactors, which can generate significant amounts of power.”
New York state has plans to build the first major new U.S. nuclear power plant in more than 15 years, and President Trump has promised to expedite permitting such projects.
“Wall Street is also very interested in those projects from an investment standpoint,” Henry added. “So, we’ll be watching to see how those projects continue to develop.”
Special Report: Most Valuable Players:
Welcome to Insurance Journal’s third annual Most Valuable Players recognition awards report for insurance agency customer service representatives and account managers. This report features 13 MVPs who define what it means to be a successful CSR and/or account manager in today’s independent insurance agencies. These professionals have achieved impressive success throughout their careers and demonstrated key skills of what it takes to be the best service professional. They also have
shown they have a passion for what they do and a commitment to professionalism and, in some cases, specialization. For them, being a CSR/account manager is more than a job. Insurance Journal’s MVPs come from all regions of the country, live and work in cities or towns big and small, and know the importance of serving their customers. Information included in this report was voluntarily submitted online by individuals and management and was supplemented by other public information
sources. There are more agency MVPs who deserve recognition than are profiled in this report and, hopefully, these profiles will inspire others to do what it takes to reach the top of their profession. Insurance Journal hopes to recognize more MVPs in future reports. For questions or comments on this award program, please contact Andrea Wells at: awells@insurancejournal.com.
Shannon Bailey
C3 Risk & Insurance
San Diego, California
Shannon Bailey has been in the insurance industry for over 20 years, developing a broad range of expertise in various markets.
“While I wouldn’t say I specialize in a single market segment, I consider myself a well-rounded generalist with deep experience supporting mid- to large-sized clients across a wide range of industries,” said Bailey, a client manager at C3 Risk and Insurance in San Diego, California.
“This exposure has allowed me to develop a deep understanding of diverse insurance needs, risk profiles, and compliance requirements,” she said. “Over the years, I’ve honed my skills in everything from policy administration and audit management to coverage analysis and claims coordination.”
As a client manager, she prioritizes building strong, trust-based relationships with both clients and carrier partners.
“I’ve worked alongside talented teams, underwriters, and producers, gaining invaluable insights that have sharpened my ability to navigate complex policies, streamline renewals, and proactively address potential issues before they arise.”
Bailey credits her exceptional mentors for shaping her technical expertise and her approach to client service. She strives to
Account Managers & CSRs
pass those lessons along to her team.
“I’m known for my attention to detail, responsiveness, and ability to translate technical insurance language into clear, actionable steps for clients,” Bailey said. “My goal has always been to deliver exceptional service and help clients feel confident that their business is well-protected.”
Bailey takes pride in being someone others can count on to get the job done right—with professionalism, care, and a solution-focused mindset.
Jackson Owens BKCW
Killeen, Texas
Jackson Owens hit the ground running as soon as he graduated college, joining BKCW in Killeen, Texas, after earning a degree from Texas A&M Central Texas in 2021.
He entered the BKCW Commercial Lines training program and then joined the agency’s large commercial account team to handle the day-to-day service needs of the agency’s clients.
“The book I work on is approximately $28 million in premium and $3.5 million in revenue,” said Owens, who works as a commercial lines account manager. He serves a diverse roster of clients, from construction to non-profits to refuse haulers, among others.
Owens feels fortunate to have a great team that helps mentor him, encouraging him to continue growing in his role.
“From my fellow team members to management, I have always felt supported,” Owens said. “That is an excellent feeling in your first real job and in such a challenging industry to learn. My next step in growing will be to apply for the team
lead position opening soon.”
Owens’ clients know they can reach him whenever they have an issue.
“I believe you do whatever it takes to ensure the client is taken care of,” he said. “Whether that means coming in early, staying late, or doing something over the weekend, I feel that is what our clients need and deserve from me.”
Owens said he treats clients as he would want to be treated.
“I know that if I were the client, that’s what I would want and value in a relationship,” Owens said. “When I leave for the day, I want to feel like I’ve done everything necessary to protect my clients and the agency.”
'When I leave for the day, I want to feel like I’ve done everything necessary to protect my clients and the agency.'
Jocelyn Wild Morris & Garritano
San Luis Obispo, California
Jocelyn Wild made a career change almost 20 years ago and never looked back.
“I joined Morris & Garritano in 2007, transitioning from a background in title and escrow to a new career in insurance,” said Wild, an account manager with Morris and Garritano in San Luis Obispo, California.
She started as an assistant to account manager Greg Morris in the commercial lines department and, in five years, worked her way up to account manager. While her role shifted over time, she continued to build operational expertise and client
support experience.
“Eventually, I returned to the account manager role, ready to manage a book of business again with renewed focus,” Wild said.
“A pivotal moment came in 2024 when the agency restructured the way commercial lines serviced clients and introduced the construction specialization unit,” Wild said. “Given my extensive experience with contractor accounts, I requested to join the unit.”
The move to a specialization allowed her to refine her skills, she said.
“Being surrounded by knowledgeable peers and supervisors and working within a culture of collaboration has helped me succeed and grow,” Wild said. “Over 17 years, I have formed strong relationships with clients, guiding them through the year and especially through the often stressful renewal periods, even in today’s challenging market.”
Wild says it’s a pleasure working with her clients. “I believe I have the best clients, and it’s been an honor to serve them.”
Amanda McQuaig-Beck
Insurance Office of America
Longwood, Florida
Account executive Amanda McQuaigBeck has worked her way up the ladder over the past nine years, starting out as an intern at the firm. Today, McQuaig-Beck manages a book of business with more than $16 million in premium working for two producers at Longwood, Florida-based Insurance Office of America (IOA).
“I’ve quickly risen through the ranks at IOA and was given the Account Executive of the Year award for Florida, which is continued on page 36
Special Report: Most Valuable Players:
continued from page 35
our largest region,” said McQuaig-Beck. “I’m also one of the youngest account executives ever at my agency, as I was only 27 at the time of my promotion to AE.”
McQuaig-Beck specializes in multifamily real estate, particularly apartments. “My book includes just about every type of apartment out there including garden-style apartments, Low Income Tax Credit (LIHTC) properties, Section 8 housing, and luxury high-rise apartments primarily in the Southeast and Midwest,” she said.
McQuaig-Beck enjoys opportunities to give back to those who have mentored her and to mentor the next generation of insurance professionals, joining numerous initiatives and training/development programs at her agency. McQuaig-Beck also serves as a subject matter expert for the Citizens Property Insurance initiative.
“Being given the opportunity and trust to chart my own path is the reason I’ve been so successful,” said McQuaig-Beck. “Without being given the chance to reach my full potential, I wouldn’t be in the position that I am today. I’m extremely appreciative of everyone that’s helped me along the way and put their trust in me.”
Mark Mason
Sterling Seacrest Pritchard
Atlanta, Georgia
“My career began in 2001 as a small business producer, writing coverage for anyone willing to have a conversation,” said Mark Mason, manager of client strategy with Sterling Seacrest Pritchard in Atlanta, Georgia. “I was very much a generalist, but contractors made up the largest segment of my book of business,” Mason said.
Mason says that he honed his skills for
the first seven years, focusing on his technical skills, including obtaining his CIC designation. Then he decided to transition to a service role acting as a senior client service executive for a small team at the time.
After five years as an executive, Mason moved to Sterling Seacrest Pritchard, transitioning into the middle and large market space specializing in construction. Today, he leads the office’s construction service team in Atlanta, which includes eight producers and 12 direct reports. Mason attributes his success in part to continuous learning.
“Education through organizations such as Risk and Insurance Education Alliance and the Institutes is a must to keep up with industry trends, but positioning yourself around the right people from a mentor standpoint is critical,” he said.
“I’ve learned valuable insights from many colleagues over the course of my career,” he added.
While managing a book or business along with leading a team can have its challenges, he said, but now he’s in a position to help create the next generation of leadership.
“My strategy is to lead someone to the best solution or answer through questions rather than simply providing an answer,” Mason said. “Today, I find mentoring just as rewarding as new business wins.”
Erin Lee Robertson Ryan Insurance Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Erin Lee is “a rockstar teammate, a quiet leader, and an irreplaceable part of our agency’s success,” said her nominating co-worker at Robertson Ryan Insurance in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“Erin is a seasoned powerhouse in our agency, serving as a senior account manager on our commercial lines team and doubling as a trusted team leader,” they said. “We’re lucky to have her.”
Lee has over 25 years of industry experience and brings a level of insight and professionalism that sets her apart.
“Her wealth of knowledge, calm demeanor, and unmatched work ethic make her a go-to resource within the team,” her nominator said. “Whether it’s navigating complex client accounts or training new hires, Erin elevates every task she touches. She sets the bar higher for us all.”
Lee not only has decades of expertise, she shows up for her team and clients every day, according to her co-workers, leading with humility and often putting others’ needs ahead of her own.
“And she never hesitates to lend a hand, even when her own plate is full,” they added.
Recently, one of the agency’s producers lost their account manager, and Lee stepped in and added the responsibilities to her own role.
“She not only stepped up in the management of his book of business (in addition to her own workload),” her nominator said, “she also was valuable in guiding his new support person with steady mentorship.”
“I will always jump in to assist when an occasion arises and help is needed, whether it is to help run a book when a producer is waiting for a new account manager, lend hands-on training to account managers, or simply helping out when a special project is presented,” Lee said.
Lee says to be a “super star” account manager, it’s important to always remember that “you are an intermediary, so you represent the carrier and the client.” Education is critical. “Give your clients your best work,” she added. And “admit you will not know all the answers” but will “find them.”
And “always strive to grow and learn something new.”
Account Managers & CSRs
Rachel Colón Concierge Insurance Solutions
Wynnewood, Pennsylvania
The skills someone needs for insurance industry success don’t always have to come from years in an agency.
Rachel Colón, an account manager at Concierge Insurance Solutions in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, has only been in the industry for two years. However, her previous careers in corporate merchandising and occupational therapy gave her essential insights that she’s used in her insurance career.
“My experience in corporate merchandising helped me to develop strong organizational skills essential for managing complex accounts,” Colón said. “My background working as an occupational therapist provided me with the skills for assessing needs, setting goals and timelines, and working collaboratively to meet the needs of our clients.”
Today, she serves the high-net-worth market.
“My background includes a holistic approach to care, which is crucial to providing the best service uniquely tailored to each of our clients,” she said. “I enjoy getting to know our clients and their families, as well as value feeling part of a work family. Paying attention to detail and having a questioning attitude helps to best support our clients’ needs.”
The ability to multitask and handle multiple projects throughout the day is key, as is communicating with both clients and team members throughout the process. Colón also enjoys training other team members and is ambitious in pursuing her own education.
“Every day presents a new challenge or opportunity, which makes this career
exciting,” she said. “It is important to build relationships that challenge and motivate you as you work together to find solutions within the high-net-worth space.”
Jacqueline Cavanagh
Mackoul Risk Solutions Insurance Long Beach,
New York
Jacqueline Cavanagh began her 18-year career at a small, family-owned agency, where she learned the value of personal attention and community-based service— principles that continue to guide her work today.
After 14 years, she transitioned to a larger agency, took on a role as an account manager, and soon moved to the risk placement team. Now, she is a licensed property and casualty agent and serves as a commercial account associate at Mackoul Risk Solutions in Long Beach, New York.
“I began getting to know and understand the process of remarketing renewal business and marketing new business,” Cavanagh said.
“Throughout my career, I have worn many hats: from discussing coverage options with clients to completing applications and submitting renewals, to remarketing existing policies, and handling new business marketing submissions,” she said. “I’ve also gained hands-on experience in agency accounting, which provided me insight into the operational side of the business.
“In 2023, I joined the Mackoul team and have grown and learned even more—I really enjoy my job (and) the team of people I work with.”
Cavanagh says that starting in a small family-owned agency has been very helpful throughout her career. “This gave
me exposure to all aspects of agency operations from client interactions to back-office tasks,” she said. “Working on applications, renewals, remarketing, and accounting gave me an understanding of the business and made me adaptable.”
She worked in both personal and commercial lines, giving her a broad knowledge base, which in turn made her comfortable working with various client needs, industries, and risk profiles.
“I am a team player and always willing to jump in and help,” Cavanagh said. “I work well independently and as part of a close-knit team. I am organized and able to prioritize my work in a way that is most efficient for myself and my team.”
What’s helped her be successful is to always be reliable, adapt to market changes, and have a strong commitment to professional growth.
Sarah Hatcher
Sterling Seacrest Pritchard Atlanta, Georgia
Sarah Hatcher began her insurance career five years ago when she was hired as an account analyst in the Employee Benefits department at Sterling Seacrest Pritchard in Atlanta, Georgia.
“I had a degree in public health, so I came into the industry with a very basic understanding of healthcare and medical insurance,” Hatcher said. But working in insurance wasn’t her initial plan.
“I wouldn’t say initially I was super excited about working in insurance...what 22-year-old would be?” she said.
“However, that quickly changed, and one day, I realized I actually found it really interesting and enjoyed getting to help people navigate healthcare,” Hatcher said. continued on page 38
Special Report: Most Valuable Players:
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“When you find something interesting, you tend to learn it quickly, and before I knew it, I was managing my own book and getting promoted.”
Now, she has been a client service executive for almost three years.
“I work primarily on accounts with self-funded medical, and that’s been an area I’ve really enjoyed growing into over the past couple of years,” Hatcher said.
Working with a wide variety of clients is not only interesting but helpful.
“I think that is something that has helped me most with my personal growth,” she said. “I’ve worked on everything from five life fully insured groups to 5,000 life self-funded,” she added.
Her clients are located all over the country and in all types of industries.
“I think the role changes for each group, whether it be with the benefit technology, compliance, funding arrangement, etc.,” she noted. “Every group has different needs and expectations, and I think the opportunity I’ve had to work with groups on all ends of the spectrum gave me a great perspective on the industry as a whole.”
'I’ve never felt that
my
age or years in the industry were holding me back.'
Being a constant learner who is willing to do “the research” is essential to success in her role, she said. “I’ve always been a bit of a know-it-all, and in this case, I think it’s been a helpful trait. I like to know the answer, and I like to be right.”
Her team has always supported her ambition, she said.
“I’ve never felt that my age or years in the industry were holding me back. I’ve had leaders who have trusted me and given me opportunities to prove myself,” Hatcher said. “I’ve had mentors who have answered my millions of questions, and I’ve had managers that not only acknowledge my strengths but let me lean into them and grow in the direction they take me.”
Lauren Yost
Mackoul Risk Solutions LLC Long Beach, New York
Lauren Yost is the go-to person when you need information at Mackoul Risk Solutions in Long Beach, New York.
“When I first started, I knew very little about commercial insurance,” she said.
“My company gave me all the tools and resources I needed to help me understand a complex and difficult line of work.”
“I created ‘cheat sheets’ and spreadsheets to help keep everything organized,” Yost said. “This includes everything from where we send in endorsement and loss run requests, umbrella carrier guidelines, codes to use in ACORDS within Epic, all of our portals and who the admins assigned to each are, among other things.
"I also utilize a program to record workflows, so the staff has a step-by-step guide on how to do things.”
Yost started at Mackoul Risk Solutions in 2014 and has been a CSR for 11 years. Now, coworkers know they can come to her for guidance, she said. She works to make sure that she remains an “approachable person” so that newer recruits are comfortable coming to her to ask questions.
“I will always remember where I started and how confusing it can all seem in the beginning.”
A knack for problem-solving and a philosophy to “work smarter, not harder” has served her well.
“Insurance is constantly changing by the day, and I feel it’s my job to help everyone in my office stay organized and get their work done,” she said. “I like knowing that my coworkers can rely on me to help them with any questions.”
Amy Matthes
Sterling Seacrest Pritchard Atlanta, Georgia
Amy Matthes spent 25 years in the restaurant industry before going back to school to earn a degree in risk management and insurance.
Now, she has been in the insurance industry for 12 years and serves as an account manager in employee benefits at Sterling Seacrest Pritchard in Atlanta, Georgia. She manages clients ranging from two to 500 lives, handling all aspects of benefits account management, from open enrollment meetings to strategic planning and claims management.
“There are always new products, technology, and compliance to learn about in our industry, and it is important to stay up to date on these new developments,” Matthes said.
As a chef in her previous restaurant career, Matthes says she wore many hats, including HR, cost management, creative talent, and team leadership. “All roles that transfer to the corporate world.”
She made the switch to insurance and risk management to focus more on the business management and says she has always been an advocate for the industry and what it offers.
Her advice to others: “Do not be afraid to ask questions and always ask for help if you need it. In time you will build your knowledge and expertise in the insurance world,” she said. And never stop learning.
“I have found as long as I remain teachable, I will be successful.”
Account Managers & CSRs
Brandi Hummer
C3 Risk & Insurance
San Diego, California
From her start on the carrier side to training global teams, Brandi Hummer has seen all sides of the insurance industry.
Hummer, an account manager at C3 Risk and Insurance in San Diego, California, began her career on the carrier side in 2005, working in the small business division at Fireman’s Fund Insurance. In 2009, she transitioned into the entertainment division in the same role before being promoted in 2011 to supervisor/team lead for the entertainment operations team.
In 2017, Hummer became a subject matter expert in entertainment operations and played a key role in training a newly established team in India.
“In 2019, I made the move to the agency side of the industry, starting as a client administrator, then progressing to an account manager,” Hummer said. “I’m now proud and grateful to be part of the team at C3.”
'What I knew yesterday might be different tomorrow, and I’ve learned to adjust, keep moving forward, and embrace the learning process.'
Staying adaptable and being open to opportunities while learning from mistakes is all part of learning and advancing, she said.
“I believe it’s important to stay open to learning new things and continuously evolving,” Hummer said.
“While past experience is valuable, it’s
just as important to remain flexible and not rely solely on what you’ve previously learned—things change, and growth comes from adapting,” she said.
“What I knew yesterday might be different tomorrow, and I’ve learned to adjust, keep moving forward, and embrace the learning process,” she added. “Listening and learning from others is just as important as sharing what you know.”
Making personal connections and treating each client and team member with kindness and respect goes a long way, she added.
“I try to approach everyone like I already know them—ask how their day is going, make a connection,” Hummer said. “It’s the little things that help build strong relationships and a positive work environment. Helping others succeed is one of the most fulfilling parts of being in this industry.”
Connor & Gallagher Lisle, Illinois
Susan Vanek started working at Connor & Gallagher 19 years ago—in a temporary position. At that time she wasn’t sure where the job would take her.
“I started as a temp receptionist, and within two months, they hired me as full-time receptionist, and I have grown from there,” Vanek said. “I made my way through every position at the agency.”
She has spent time working in the firm’s small business department, working on both renewals and new business. Then she moved into a customer service representative role where she spent a few years learning “the ins and outs of how insurance operates,” she said.
“After developing my skills as a CSR, I
proved myself enough and was promoted to the account manager role,” she said.
Vanek says she enjoys “fixing” accounts and investigating difficult insurance situations for clients. Now she serves as the agency’s key account manager, focusing on complex and large accounts.
“I love working on these accounts because I love finding solutions and I love being the go-to person for my clients,” she said. “The clients come to me for answers, and I love that,” she said. “They put their trust in me and know that I will be honest and open with them.”
'I teach myself. The more I know, the better I am.'
Vanek takes great pride in helping others in the firm as well.
“I am a mentor to my entire department and also assist my department director. I wear at least three hats at all times and can multitask like a champ,” she noted. “I will never say ‘that is not my job,’ and I am always a knowledge source for any and all team members.”
If she doesn’t know the answer, she finds it. “I teach myself. The more I know, the better I am.”
Susan Vanek
Idea Exchange: The Competitive Advantage
Carriers and Principles of Insurance
Every once in a while, I believe revisiting fundamental industry principles is beneficial. One such essential principle is diversity, especially for insurance carriers. “Diversity” in this case has nothing to do with race, religion, or political affiliation. Insurance diversity is about spreading risk. In other words, if a carrier wants to insure 100 homes, those 100 homes should be in different ZIP codes.
Why Diversify?
By Chris Burand
Geographic diversity is mandatory for reducing risk. But quite a few carriers today have too much business in one location. Before anyone objects and believes that carriers know better, their AI addresses this, or whatever wishful thinking is being applied, look at the carriers who lost all those homes in California.
Another example is what happened in the Midwest. Regional carriers were reinsuring property in the same ZIP codes as their own property, and they likely had too much of their own TIV (total insurable value) in those ZIP codes. When the derechos came through, their property reinsurance loss ratios topped out at 999.99%. Carriers that don’t specialize in reinsurance should not do reinsurance, but that is another weakness for another day.
Property diversification is simple to map. Liability diversification is easy to map. No good reason exists for concentrations of risk. Another benefit is the ability to write more accounts safely, rather than employing the current methodology for wildfires, which is not writing anything whatsoever in a potential wildfire zone. As a result, a lot of good risks are not being written and a lot of high-profit business is being missed.
Distributor Diversification
Diversity includes spreading the
concentration of distributors. Historically, carriers were the dog and distributors were the tail. Carriers’ expense management was built on this concept. Carriers would have little business, on a percentage basis, with any one distributor. This helped control expenses and improved the spread of underwriting risk.
Doing business with thousands of distributors spread widely, because distributors tend to write geographically
centered business, created a natural spread of business. Also, distributors were not big enough to sway underwriting standards in ways that would deteriorate a carrier’s loss ratios, and they were, mostly, not big enough to demand extra compensation. This is not the case today.
Selective Insurance publishes its concentration in its annual 10-K. I imagine some other stock carriers do the same, but I think Selective is well managed,
reasonably representative of other carriers’ experiences in this space, and what it publishes is easy to understand. In its 2025 10-K (2024 results), Selective noted that approximately 46% of its premiums are generated by aggregators—an increase from 35% three years ago. Selective may be doing a better job than key competitors, but 46% is high relative to history.
There are carriers where 50%-plus of their premiums are generated by five or fewer distributors.
Depending on the distributor, additional geographic exposure might not exist because their consolidation/network
strategy has considerable geographic and other risk diversification. However, that is not always the case, especially as some larger distributors push small commercial accounts into service centers where retention rates are lower. And where retention rates are lower, adverse selection may build.
The same thing happens when carriers are short on surplus and begin nonrenewing or telling agents to get off great accounts. That carrier simply needs to “right-size” its premium-to-surplus ratio, even if it means eliminating good accounts. This is not an issue for good accounts that can easily find better carriers (and better is the reality because the account wouldn’t be moving if the incumbent wasn’t short in surplus). The clients that can’t move concentrate with the carrier—i.e., reduced diversification.
But even if loss exposure is not compromised, underwriting and expense issues arise. The tail is wagging the dog. The carrier cannot risk losing such a large book, and if the large book does not consist of adverse selection, it can be moved. These large distributors have their own markets, after all.
Expense Factor
The expense factor is possibly more problematic. AM Best ran a study in 2024 showing commissions have increased. Ask any regular agency if commissions have
increased, and the answer is likely “NO!” Arthur Gallagher’s 10-K shows the company now earns more ($359 million versus $268 million) in additional overrides (if I’m interpreting that line item correctly) than regular contingencies. I assume the label the company uses includes the overrides.
Carriers do not give up extra commissions voluntarily.
Having that much concentration with such few distributors—distributors who have competing markets and are now larger than the majority of carriers—is bad management. Carriers always had the power to mitigate this risk, but they did not act.
If carriers want to realign in this regard, the solution is simple, given the debt loads of the consolidators. Cut their commission rates so that they must sell assets, meaning agencies. It is drastic, as remedying any concentration of risk is, because the remedy needs to happen now—not over 10 years. To do it over 10 years is oxymoronic. This may sound harsh, but gentle is not part of the solution because carriers waiting 10 years to solve the problem likely won’t exist in 10 years, at least not without their stock tanking.
I know these are not “high-falutin” AI, let’s all get excited about the easy button solutions. These are basic, fundamental facts of how to run an insurance company. Failure is due to humans, and the solution is dependent on humans making the proper analysis, making hard decisions, and building a healthier insurance environment. To remain healthy, the insurance industry cannot become concentrated. Already, 10 property and casualty carriers write 52% of all premiums (out of approximately 1,000 carriers). Ninety carriers write 90% of all premiums. The remaining 910 carriers are splitting 10% of premiums. Maybe this itself is another example of excessive concentration?
Spreading risk is fundamental to insurance management. It’s time for carriers to re-evaluate all forms of their spread of risk.
Burand is the founder and owner of Burand & Associates LLC based in Pueblo, Colo. Phone: 719-4853868. E-mail: chris@burand-associates.com.
Idea Exchange: Industry Reflections Understanding the Future of Insurance by Studying the Past
One of the things I love about the insurance business is that anyone—regardless of where they start—can build a meaningful, lifelong career. I am proof of that. In our industry, your ability to reach your potential is a function of your curiosity, your work ethic, and your willingness to learn and grow. Recently, as I was writing a book chronicling Crum & Forster’s (C&F’s) 200-year journey, I reflected not only on how much our industry has evolved but also on how much opportunity still lies ahead. C&F’s history highlighted just how important it is to attract and develop the next generation of talent: people who are curious, focused, and eager to lead the industry into the future.
By Marc Adee
I am looking forward to sharing more of these reflections at the 2025 Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF) Global Conference in New York. For now, here are a few thoughts on how the future of work in insurance is taking shape.
Insurance Is a Great Career Choice
Preparing the next generation of leaders is one of our greatest responsibilities. To develop future leaders, first we have to attract the best and brightest into our business. Insurance has always had a reputation for being “boring.” One takeaway from C&F’s 200-year history is that insurance is a tough business—but it is not boring.
Since most young people are not considering insurance as a career when they graduate high school, the industry has developed extensive self-study programs. While these programs were developed in self-defense, it is interesting that they make the industry accessible to anyone
To read a digital copy of Marc Adee’s book, The Once and Future C&F, visit: https://www.cfins.com/c&fbook.
and allow people to chart their own educational paths.
Beyond book learning, we need to provide clear pathways for growth—and a big part of that involves real-world experiences. The most interesting careers are built on the dynamic tension created as progressive levels of experience and training meet increasingly challenging assignments over many years. The good news is that there is always a new challenge to tackle. Even so, young professionals often have a hard time seeing a clear path from the front lines to the C-suite, while senior leaders may not always have visibility into who is ready to take the next step.
At C&F, I encourage people at all levels to rise above the crowd by developing an interesting “And Plan”—getting involved over and above their day jobs. One example is our Brand Ambassador program.
The Brand Ambassadors come from all over the company. They learn about C&F’s extensive product suite, and they work on advanced networking skills. Then we send them out to represent C&F at industry events and on local boards, including through organizations like the IICF. It is a win-win: employees build confidence and leadership skills, and the C&F story reaches a new audience.
Decentralization Creates Opportunity
How do we create “Great Place to Work” energy? Our goal is to make sure that our people have the opportunity to build a meaningful career path at C&F.
One of C&F’s key structural features is our decentralized business unit structure. The idea is to move from a “supply push” model, where the leader dictates the agenda, to a “demand pull” approach, where teams are accountable for solving problems and driving results.
Decentralization puts decision-making power with the people closest to our customers. Our colleagues in the field know their clients’ needs better than anyone. They are also in the best position to identify how innovations like AI can streamline workflows and improve service. Because we trust our teams and give them real ownership, engagement and retention go up. People are inspired when they see
the impact their decisions make, which gives them confidence to take their career to the next level.
Beyond book learning, we need to provide clear pathways for growth—and a big part of that involves realworld experiences.
Building a Strong Hybrid Work Culture
There is an active debate right now about the future of the hybrid workplace. As much as I am a creature of the office, my perspective is that hybrid work structures are the way of the future. So, how do we extend our culture in the hybrid world? It comes down to intentionality. We are deliberate about creating opportunities for connection. We have an event-driven hybrid culture. We spend some of the savings from our reduced office footprint on meaningful employee experiences: large team gatherings, cross-functional networking opportunities, and partner appreciation events. We get people together who would never actually have met in-person in the old days. The events are intense and designed to build relationships while fostering a sense of belonging in a short timeframe.
We also designate high-density office days, which create a snowball effect where more people show up because they know the office will be packed. Our quarterly new employee onboarding events are a great example. Bringing new hires
from across the country together with colleagues and leaders helps them feel part of something bigger right from day one.
Cultivating Philanthropy
We should all be proud that the insurance industry’s core product provides a social good. We also believe in giving back to the communities where we live and work. Beyond corporate giving, I believe in empowering employees to lead grassroots efforts by encouraging them to choose causes they are passionate about and getting involved in their communities.
We have an employee-led committee that drives our charitable giving and volunteerism, selecting the organizations we support and rallying colleagues to get involved. Initiatives like the IICF’s Month of Giving unite thousands of insurance professionals in service and offer a powerful reminder of what we can accomplish together.
Engage and Prosper
What do you see as the future of insurance? I hope you will join the conversation. One lesson I learned from exploring our company’s 200-year history is that we are stronger when we work together—sharing ideas, supporting one another, and building a brighter future for our industry.
Adee is the CEO of Crum & Forster, a Fairfax company. Crum & Forster is a 200-year old specialty insurance company, providing property & casualty, accident & health and surety products.
Idea Exchange: Technology
Building Tech-Ready Teams
How agencies are seeking out new skill sets to embrace technology
Insurance professional across the country know how to adapt. From rising catastrophic weather events to shifting carrier appetites and increased regulatory and legal complexity, today’s market is putting more pressure—and more work—on leaders nationwide.
By Mike Erlandson
To stay ahead, many agencies are turning to technology. Automation—and even artificial intelligence—can help streamline many routine, manual tasks so agents can spend their human power on more valuable activities, like relationship building and prospecting.
But to leverage technology efficiencies and meet the changing expectations of clients, agency leaders are rethinking the skills they need on their teams. Increasingly, successful agencies are prioritizing “soft” skills, like flexibility and adaptability, along with “hard” tech skills when training staff or making new hires. Today’s leaders need to invest in a tech-savvy workforce that knows how to use all the tools available to them. Leaders and agents alike need data literacy, tech fluency, and flexibility to change with whatever comes next.
Data Literacy: Big Data Is a Big Deal
Insurtech is constantly expanding the toolbox of data-driven solutions. Techforward agencies are using their data to fine-tune efficiencies, track performance, and stay on top of market trends.
But data must be collected accurately and analyzed correctly to deliver value. For agents, that means data literacy is a must-have skill.
As data connects people from one part of an organization to another, insurance has become a team activity more than ever before. Teams that treat clean data as everyone’s responsibility get more from the tools they already have.
Insurance professionals who bring attention to detail and an understanding of how data gets handed off from one department to the other can maximize the potential of the information that moves in and out of an agency. At the agent level, those who bring in or improve their data skills contribute to the entire organization’s goals. While not everyone needs to know how to analyze data, everyone needs to understand the importance of data to the agency’s work.
Agencies that maintain clean data do more, from placing risk to tracking client interactions. That’s why data-savvy leaders communicate about data in their organizations. They clearly explain to their teams why and how data is collected and how it impacts everyone’s job. They continually
reinforce data collection standards, and they regularly share data insights with their teams to build better understanding. That level of data literacy makes existing data-driven tech more effective and opens opportunities to implement other technology. Data knowledge is a new prerequisite for both potential hires and current employees in today’s agencies.
Technology is increasingly used across many sectors to manage workflows, track performance, automate client communication, and make sense of industry trends. Insurance is rapidly adopting solutions for these same functions, and agencies need people who can put these solutions to
work in their own organization.
Agencies can expand their tech abilities by developing skills within their current team. But they can also add those skills by looking for new hires from outside insurance.
‘At the agent level, those who bring in or improve their data skills contribute to the entire organization’s goals.’
In a 2023 survey of insurance agency professionals by Vertafore, one-third of agency professionals reported starting their insurance career after working in another industry. Those employees can be uniquely useful for an agency. Consider what skills new employees can bring in from other fields—such as familiarity with CRM systems, analytics dashboards, or AI-powered customer service.
New hires from tech-invested fields
may already be fluent with the tools that are transforming our industry, and that can shorten training time and speed up adoption. They may also be able to bring in best practices and insights into how technology improves work in other sectors—knowledge that can benefit an entire agency.
Hiring from outside the industry brings advantages when agencies import technology knowledge that complements the deep industry experience of long-term insurance professionals. In addition, these new employees can bring a level of excitement and curiosity to the ways technology can help agencies work smarter and put more energy into the tasks where humans thrive, like advising clients and finding ways to grow.
Growth Mindset: Keep an Open Mind
Developing or importing technical skills and knowledge comes with a requisite: a growth mindset. That’s why tech-savvy
agencies are prioritizing curiosity as an essential attribute for both their leaders and staff, and why they are finding ways to harden curiosity into a key agency value.
Staying ahead requires evaluating technology and using sound judgment. For leaders, that means taking the time to thoroughly vet new tech and trusting the people around them to say what could be improved.
Think about one of the most famous corporate curiosity experiments. Decades ago, tech giant 3M famously started a “15% time” program, giving employees time to explore new ideas, which resulted in new innovations that ultimately benefitted the company.
Agencies that thrive in demanding markets rely on agents who work with this mindset: they follow their curiosity, find efficiencies, and help their business grow. While 15% of time allocated to curiosity may be a little much in our industry and the demand that comes from our roles, providing employees the ability to drive change goes a long way.
I was given the ability to explore in my own agency experience, which led to sizable innovations for our agency and empowered me to feel that I was making a greater impact for my organization.
Leaders who listen to employees and encourage them to explore new processes stand to benefit. There will always be someone in an organization who wants to improve efficiency or find change. The value in skilled leaders is finding those people and giving them the opportunity to make that change happen.
Since technology is constantly changing, investing in skills that help agents take advantage of tech—data literacy, cross-industry expertise, and a culture of curiosity—will help agencies stay prepared for new advances. Agencies that embrace tech-driven efficiencies and human-centered skills will be best off to succeed in any market.
Erlandson manages partnerships at Vertafore, where he focuses on technology that makes the most impact for agencies. He has 18-plus years of experience in both insurance and insurtech with a passion for efficiency and automation.
Idea Exchange: Ask the Insurance Recruiter
Top Non-Salary Factors Motivating Insurance Professionals to Seek New Jobs in 2025
Changing careers ranks right up there with some of life’s biggest decisions—it’s not something people take lightly. Every year, my team connects with thousands of insurance professionals who are exploring the job market. While every candidate has their own unique story, we’ve found that when it comes to what motivates their job search, the reasons tend to be surprisingly similar. Compensation can make accepting a new job easier, but there are generally bigger catalysts behind the decision to start a job search.
#1 Heavy Workloads Drive People Away
Recent viral work trends like Dry Promotions, Quiet Quitting, and Act Your Wage all highlight one issue: employees are feeling overworked.
My team hears it directly from account managers:
• “I inherited extra books after turnover. I asked for help, but no hires are coming.”
• “I’m working nights and weekends just to keep up. Even after a health scare, I couldn’t disconnect.”
Work-life balance is priceless for most job seekers. If your agency is short-staffed, chances are your employees are already thinking about leaving.
#2 Return-to-Office Policies
I understand the value agency owners
see in having employees work on-site. There are clear benefits to in-person collaboration. However, the reality is that the insurance talent pool is already small—and enforcing hybrid or in-office policies cuts the talent pool even further. Many experienced professionals only want remote roles and won’t apply for jobs requiring office time.
Here’s what candidates share with my team:
• “I’m more productive at home without office distractions.”
• “I was hired remotely but forced back to the office. I live over an hour away—commuting isn’t realistic.”
• “I split time between two homes to stay close to family. I need flexibility.”
The demand for remote work is clear. Return-to-office (RTO) policies cause turnover and make recruiting harder in three major ways:
1. Fewer applicants—Most qualified candidates want remote roles and won’t engage if office work is required.
2. Smaller talent pool—You’re limited to candidates within a reasonable commuting distance.
3. Longer vacancies—Remote roles fill in 30–45 days. Hybrid roles take around 100 days. Full in-office jobs often stay vacant for nine months to over a year.
As outlined in the workload discussion,
unfilled roles mean heavier burdens on existing staff—and slower hiring can multiply your staffing challenges.
By Mary Newgard
#3 Lack of Advancement
I’ve worked in the insurance industry since 2003, starting as a trainee fresh out of college. Agencies still invest in young talent—and they should—but the industry’s reality quickly sets in: even after just one year, many professionals want real advancement opportunities.
We hear it all the time:
• “I’m a senior account manager aiming for an AE role, but my agency promoted someone else, and I don’t want to wait.”
• “I want leadership, but the agency is family-run and there’s no path for me.”
• “The nearest retirement is decades away—I can’t afford to wait that long for a promotion.”
Without clear advancement opportunities, talented people start looking elsewhere no matter what their experience level.
Why Does a Candidate’s Job Search Motivation Matter to You?
Understanding a candidate’s motivation is crucial for two reasons.
First, it shapes your recruiting strategy. Meeting their needs and solving their pain points makes hiring easier and more successful.
Second, it’s key to retention.
If you ignore the issues driving a candidate to leave their last job, you risk those same problems causing them to leave you for a competitor.
Newgard is partner and senior search consultant for Capstone Search Group, a national recruiting firm dedicated to the insurance industry. For questions and comments, email: asktherecruiter@csgrecruiting.com.
Idea Exchange: The Marketing Connection
The Art of Storytelling in Insurance How to Make Technical Topics Engaging and Relatable
When was the last time you watched someone’s eyes light up when you mentioned policy exclusions, aggregate limits, or automated underwriting?
By Erin Dwyer
Here’s the thing—insurance is fundamentally about stories. Every policy represents a narrative of protection, and every risk assessment predicts how someone’s story might unfold. Yet we’re often so caught up in the technical complexity of our industry that we forget how to tell these stories in ways that resonate. Regardless of your role in the industry, your success hinges on one critical skill: making the complex feel accessible and the technical feel human.
Why Stories Stick When Statistics Slide
When we hear a story, our brain lights up—not just the language centers but areas responsible for experiencing the events themselves. This explains why a potential client might remember a story about a restaurant owner whose business was saved by business interruption coverage long after they’ve forgotten the specific policy limits and deductibles.
The 3-Step Structure for Insurance Communication
Every compelling story follows a structure, and insurance stories are no exception. Aristotle identified a story’s basic plot structure as having a beginning, middle, and end (setup, confrontation, and resolution).
Here’s how to apply this classic framework to your technical communications:
1. The Beginning/Setup —In insurance terms, this means painting a picture of the current challenge or inefficiency your audience faces. Don’t just list problems— help them feel the frustration of a broker waiting weeks for underwriting decisions or the anxiety of a policyholder navigating a complex claims process.
2. The Middle/Confrontation—In our industry, conflict often comes in the form of market disruption, regulatory changes, or evolving customer expectations. Make your audience feel the stakes. What happens if they don’t adapt to automated processes? What’s the cost of sticking with legacy systems when competitors are leveraging AI?
3. The End/Resolution—Here’s where your offering enters. Show how your audience becomes the hero in their own story, enabled by your solution to serve their
customers better, make smarter decisions, or create new opportunities.
Making Technical Concepts Tangible
Insurance is full of abstract concepts that benefit from concrete comparisons. The key is choosing metaphors that illuminate (rather than obscure) your message.
Explaining excess and surplus lines coverage? Don’t get bogged down in admitted versus non-admitted carrier distinctions. Instead, describe it as the specialty shop that carries exactly what you need when the big-box store comes up empty—a place where unique risks find their perfect match.
Discussing predictive analytics? Skip the algorithm explanations and focus on the concept of a foggy window that gets clearer the more data it processes, helping underwriters see patterns invisible to the human eye.
Reviewing policy exclusions? Avoid the laundry list approach that makes coverage sound restrictive. Instead, frame exclusions as the fence around your garden—they’re not there to keep you out but to clearly define the space that’s fully protected within those boundaries.
Storytelling for Different Audiences
For Wholesalers: Focus on transformation stories that show how new products
July 7, 2025
American Underwriters Insurance Company
305 Madison Avenue Morristown, NJ 07960
The above company has made application to the Division of Insurance to obtain a Foreign Company License to transact Property and Casualty Insurance in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Any person having any information regarding the company which relates to its suitability for the license or authority the applicant has requested is asked to notify the Division by personal letter to the Commissioner of Insurance, 1000 Washington Street, Suite 810, Boston, MA 021186200, Attn: Financial Surveillance and Company Licensing within 14 days of the date of this notice.
or services can help retail partners better serve their clients. Use before-and-after scenarios that highlight the competitive advantage your offerings provide.
For Retail Agents: Center your narratives around client success stories. Demonstrate your understanding of new insurance solutions to position yourself as a trusted advisor (rather than just a product peddler).
For Carriers: Emphasize stories of innovation and market leadership. Demonstrate how embracing new tech or approaches can position you ahead of competitors and better serve evolving customer needs.
For Insurtechs: Craft stories that show partnership rather than disruption. Illustrate how your innovation enhances (rather than replaces) existing industry relationships and processes.
Final Thoughts
The next time you find yourself explaining a complex insurance concept, resist the urge to dive straight into specifications and features. Instead, ask yourself: What story am I really telling here? Who is the hero, what transformation are they seeking, and how does my solution help them achieve it?
Don’t confuse listing features with telling stories. Features are ingredients; stories show the meal being enjoyed.
July 7, 2025
Swiss Re Corporate Solutions America Insurance Corporation
1200 Main Street, Suite 800 Kansas City, MO 64105
The above company has made application to the Division of Insurance to amend their Foreign Company License to transact Property and Casualty Insurance in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Any person having any information regarding the company which relates to its suitability for the license or authority the applicant has requested is asked to notify the Division by personal letter to the Commissioner of Insurance, 1000 Washington Street, Suite 810, Boston, MA 021186200, Attn: Financial Surveillance and Company Licensing within 14 days of the date of this notice.
Every industry develops its own language, but stories should be accessible to your entire audience. When technical terms are necessary, weave definitions naturally into the narrative.
‘Regardless of your role in the industry, your success hinges on one critical skill: making the complex feel accessible and the technical feel human.’
Authentic stories acknowledge challenges and setbacks. Showing how problems are overcome builds credibility and trust. Different audiences need different narratives. The story that resonates with a tech-savvy insurtech founder won’t necessarily connect with a traditional carrier executive.
The ability to connect through story isn’t just a nice-to-have skill—it’s your competitive advantage. Your technical expertise opens doors, but your stories build bridges.
Dwyer is a senior account manager at Direct Connection Advertising & Marketing. Visit directconnectionusa.com to learn more.
Closing Quote
Life-Saving Building Codes Are the Unsung Heroes of Resilience
By Mark Berven
‘It’s time to reframe the narrative around modernizing building codes.’
In an era where billion-dollar disasters are becoming the norm, one truth stands above the wreckage: strong building codes save buildings— and lives. Yet despite mounting risks, the U.S. remains caught in a paradox. We have the knowledge and tools to build safer structures, but adoption and enforcement lag.
In fact, according to FEMA, 65% of U.S. counties, cities, and towns have not adopted modern building codes.
It’s time to reframe the narrative around modernizing building codes. Building code compliance isn’t red tape; it’s a frontline defense. But key stakeholders have outdated perceptions of modernized building codes. Couple that with cost concerns and a lack of urgency, and the progress of updating building codes to meet the enhanced severe weather events we are facing is in danger of stalling.
To protect people and property, keep businesses open and communities intact, and most importantly, save lives, we must position building
codes as a strategic investment in long-term resilience—not as a regulatory burden.
The Risk Reality
The frequency and severity of natural disasters are rising, with property owners deeply concerned about the future. Since 2023, concern about severe weather has increased significantly in wildfire (+28 points) and hurricane (+16 points) zones. A recent survey from Nationwide of commercial property owners revealed that one in three already have experienced damage from a natural disaster, increasing to nearly two in three in hurricane-prone regions.
But as recent events show us, severe weather isn’t just a coastal problem. Inland risks like wind and wildfires are rising, too. Structural damage, business interruption, and water intrusion are top concerns.
The Code Compliance Paradox
Nationwide’s survey revealed that a staggering 100% of property stakeholders and 60% of insurance agents surveyed agree that building code compliance is critical. Yet only 39% of stakeholders say they’ve upgraded their property above current code requirements—a 13-point drop from 2023. Despite wide familiarity with IBHS FORTIFIED standards, upgrades remain uncommon due to issues like the time needed to research options (64%) and high costs (62%).
However, adoption of these enhanced building standards
has made a big difference in many instances. Consider the example of Strengthen Alabama Homes, a program that has successfully reframed building codes as a strategic investment rather than a regulatory obligation. This initiative demonstrates the benefits of adopting stronger building codes, including enhanced resilience and reduced recovery costs. Other states should follow Alabama’s leadership in this field and adopt similar programs.
Mindset Shift: From Obligation to Opportunity
Building codes should be seen not just as mandatory but as mission critical for business survival. Codes support physical resilience as well as business continuity, reduced downtime, and lower recovery costs. Agents and stakeholders increasingly view compliance as a factor in insurance pricing and risk assessment.
To bridge the gap between awareness and action, we need real solutions: streamlined decision tools, educational
resources, and cost-share programs. Emphasizing the cost-benefit is crucial. For instance, it took 100% of property owners surveyed up to six months and $10,000 to recover from damage caused by severe weather events. Strong codes can reduce this burden dramatically. The numbers don’t lie—strong codes don’t slow us down; they keep us standing.
We must advocate for stronger codes and support initiatives that make compliance easier and more affordable. By doing so, we can ensure that our communities are better prepared for the challenges ahead.
Berven is president and chief operating officer of Nationwide Property & Casualty, which includes agency-based and direct-to-consumer distribution, excess & surplus/specialty insurance, agribusiness insurance, claims, strategic partnerships, member solutions, and the commercial and personal lines organizations. He previously served as Nationwide’s chief strategy and product management officer. He joined Nationwide in 1994.
INSURANCE INDUSTRY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION
Helping communities and enriching lives, together.
Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF) is a unique nonprofit that unites the collective strengths of the insurance industry to help communities and enrich lives through grants, volunteer service and leadership. IICF has awarded more than $50 million in community grants and contributed $12 million in volunteer service value over the past 30+ years.
Join us for the IICF Month of Giving Register as a team or individual volunteer and find projects near you at: volunteer.iicf.org
Month of Giving October 2025
Since 1998, IICF has hosted the largest ongoing volunteer initiative in the insurance industry. This tradition continues with our month-long celebration of industry volunteerism in October.
IICF also offers year-round volunteering for sustained community involvement and impact. Join with thousands of your insurance industry colleagues as we come together and give back to our neighbors in need.
991-2149 khartweg@iicf.org
(917) 544-0895 emyatt@iicf.org
(647) 704-1550 sgladki@iicf.org
Risk is everywhere. In everything. With Applied Underwriters by your side, the gears of commerce, innovation, and exploration keep turning. Experience the unrivaled heart and unwavering service that only Applied delivers.
