This article on an upcoming law review study on the role, effect and potential liability exposure of the insurance industry with regard to climate change provides the perfect opportunity for me to branch out into a new line of discussion on this blog on another issue that is of professional and intellectual interest to me,
Industry News
The Operations of Third Party Administrators
Third party administrators and claims adjustment companies play a significant role in my practice because they often administer ERISA governed plans and adjust claims under insurance policies on behalf of insurers. As a result, I have long been interested in how they are run, staffed, marketed and the like. For those of you who may share…
Risk Transfer, Major League Baseball and Insurance
It’s a truism that insurance greases the skids for the entire economy; as a risk sharing mechanism, it allows businesses and individuals to move forward knowing they won’t bear the entire cost if something goes wrong. David Rossmiller’s ongoing coverage at his blog of the response of coastal states to a decrease in available homeowners…
Unfunded Pensions and Green Mountain Captives
Interesting collection of articles across the mainstream business press today for those interested in the subjects covered by this blog. Two interesting pieces – one factual, one commentary – on the rickety condition of state and municipal pensions, and their impact on the fiscal health of states and local governments. Still more interesting, at…
Problems in Long Term Care Insurance and Lessons for the Rest of Us
I criticized the New York Times a couple weeks back about an article on the NFL’s pension and disability plans, basically because the article was animated by an underlying ignorance of recent legal events concerning those plans. It may, perhaps, have been too much to expect that the reporter would have a full understanding of…
Cyberinsurance
I was going to write about something else today – about a particular technical, tactical issue in litigating insurance coverage and ERISA, particularly breach of fiduciary duty, cases – but I came across something else that was too intriguing to me to pass up, and I will return later this week to the issue I…
Robert Kingsley on Insurance Industry Consolidation, and the Pros and Cons of Hiring Lawyers
This blog serves many purposes, at least in my mind. Among them is to bring to the reader information he or she may otherwise not have access to, and another is for me to investigate things in the insurance and ERISA fields that I am interested in. I think both of these purposes are well…
Improving the Insurer Insured Relationship
This post from Legal Sanity, in which the writer talks about the importance of mutually beneficial business relationships, defined as those in which each side essentially is watching out for the other even more than for itself, caught my attention, although not, I am sure, for the reason the writer intended, who wrote it…
Deja Vu All Over Again All Over Again
Jeez, didn’t I just say this same thing, in less words, a few weeks ago? What really bothers me is I don’t know whether I should interpret this as a case of great minds think alike, or as evidence that my original thought, published here, just wasn’t that original (even if it was…
Insolvency Funds and Why the Rich Should Know Better
Massachusetts, like most and I would assume all states, has a number of legislatively created entities that participate in or affect the insurance market in one way or another, including an insolvency fund intended to cover losses underwritten by, yes, insolvent insurers.
The soon to be outgoing governor of the Commonwealth has now signed legislation…