Greatest Insurance Losses Not On Balance Sheet

I am attaching a link to a story that appears in today's edition of Front Page News. It is a worthwhile read for insurance professionals who have been around for a while.

By Larry Goanos.
Like fog rolling into The City of London, a layer of sadness has settled over the professional lines segment of the insurance industry in the past month with the passing of Bob Clements, Jon Vlachos and Tom Vietor. These three were not only skilled practitioners of the insurance trade, but also upstanding men who graced our business in their unique ways.

Read the rest at http://fpn.advisen.com/fpnHomepagep.shtml?resource_id=129480389-1044114304&userEmail=jblinn@advisen.com#top

Cyber on my Mind

Advisen publishes Front Page News (FPN) every work day. Actually, a given that we publish FPN on most holidays, it is pretty frequent. We have four editions that we need to prepare - Front Page News, FPN - European Edition, FPN - Healthcare Edition and FPN - Environmental. Each has a distinct audience. It is an important challenge to find fifteen stories that are relevant to the readership of each edition.

We follow a number of metrics to evaluate what our readers think about the various editions. We know, for example that while the Healthcare edition has a relatively smaller readership, the readers are very devoted to the content we provide. We also track the types of articles that are most frequently read. One of the consistent trends we have identified is that our readers are interested in articles about cyber issues. This includes topics such as system breaches, unauthorized release of information, emerging laws and regulations as well as the litigation that surrounds all of this. Cyber articles stand out as being of the greatest interest to our readers.

If you have an article that you would like for us to consider including in Front Page News, feel free to send it in to editors@advisen.com. It doesn't have to deal with a cyber issue, but it does help.

The RIMS Benchmark Survey is Out!

30 years - just think about it. RIMS has been publishing the RIMS Benchmark Survey(tm) for that long. I have had the opportunity to be associated with the undertaking most of that time as well. So this year we celebrate the longevity of providing this valuable information to Risk Managers.

Every year it is a huge effort to assemble all of the data and put it into publishable form. We have always enjoyed strong support from RIMS and its members, so that we are able to provide timely information that assists in their work.

If you are interested in finding out more about the book, the link is

http://www.rims.org/resources/BenchmarkSurvey/Pages/PurchasetheBook.aspx

2010 AIRMIC Conference

As one wag prepared me, "the Germans had the right idea with Manchester", my expectations were pretty low for the 2010 AIRMIC conference. It turns out that Manchester is an interesting city with three colleges and a large Chinatown. The facility is new and well suited to a conference such as AIRMIC.

Advisen had a booth at the conference

which is shown to the right. Standing at the Booth are Colin Fennelly, our Director of Sales in the UK as well as Joan Kelly who is responsible for advertising and content sales.

During the conference, AIRMIC released a paper titled "Casualty Classes of Insurance Benchmarking Report 2010" which was prepared by Advisen in conjunction with AIRMIC and Chartis. If you are an AIRMIC member, you can access the paper for free. We anticipate conducting a suite of three benchmarking surveys in 2010/2011 with AIRMIC as well.

Webinars

We have recently begun to host more webinars. They are an incredibly effective way to share information and provide insight to people with a similar interest. Furthermore, they are but another way to connect and communicate with prospects without having to get on an airplane to visit with them. I think that American Airlines is probably devestated by the reduction in my flying over the past few years.

We recently were fortunate to be asked by ACE to host a webinar entitled "Going Global – Emerging Issues for Environmental Programs". For this webinar, held on November 12, we had 300 participants from around the globe - including people from UK, Canada, Bermuda, Germany, etc. One of the true signs of audience engagement is the number of questions received - we had 41 that came in over the space of an hour.

We are putting together our calendar for next year's sessions. We expect to have quarterly sessions on Securities litigation as well as special topics including EPLI, cyber liability and the state of the market. If you would like more information about Advisen Webinars and our capability to assemble a relevant audience as well as host an engaging event, contact Advisen’s Joan Kelly at ads@advisen.com

Insurance Newsletters Evaluation

Advisen publishes a daily electronic newsletter - Front Page News or FPN that has a circulation of over 100,000 insurance professionals. The field has grown more crowded and diverse as other organizations create newsletters. We have several editions in addition to our core Professional edition, including FPN Europe, Environmental and Healthcare. While we spend a lot of time creating each edition, often our efforts go unremarked. For that reason, it is always interesting to see what others say about our efforts.

We recently came across a piece entitled "Eight US Insurance Daily Newsletters Appraised - Which One is Right for Your Company?" which was written by Ronald Gift Mullins. A copy of his piece can be found here. He took a look at the following list of newsletters:

• Advisen Front Page News Professional Edition,
• BestDay,
• Business Insurance Daily News,
• III (Insurance Information Institute)
• Insurance Daily,
• Insurance Newscast,
• InsuranceNewsNet,
• National Underwriter Daily,
• SNL Insurance Daily

He rated them on a scale of up to five POLIES.

And The Winner Was...

Drum roll please....Advisen's Front Page News. Here is what he wrote:

"Advisen Front Page News Professional Edition. www.advisen.com Each business day, according to its promotional copy, David Bradford, editor, and others examine more than 60,000 articles from 4,000 domestic and international news sources to find the 15 most relevant ones to include in Advisen’s FPN newsletter. “Our goal is to provide news that is valuable and of interest to commercial P&C professionals,” Bradford replied to questions, “not just news about the insurance industry. We cover a wide array of economic, legal and regulatory events that influence the insurance industry.” It is e-mailed in the morning between 7:30 and 8:30.There are five full-time and two part-time Advisen employees, of which one works exclusively on the newsletters. The staff does original reporting and writing, and material is accepted from industry experts, companies and agencies. But most of the items are from major newspapers, business news services. The first half 2009 P/C results did not appear in the newsletter until Sept. 30 as part of a wire service report.The annual subscription cost is $199 and there are about 100,000 subscribers. “We’ve occasionally tried to track the pass alongs–and there are a lot,” Bradford quipped, “especially when there are stories about strippers.” One stripper reference reported an account of a Florida man who sued a nightclub and a stripper for injuries he received when the exotic dancer allegedly kicked him in the face during her performance. There is also a FPN Digest newsletter which is free but only three of the 15 articles can be viewed in full.The Advisen Front Page News has a pleasing format and type style. Judicious use of color and fonts focus attention on individual headlines. The articles flow from most significant to not so, including from time to time a whimsical one. Clicking on a headline brings up the original source with attribution. Also, with the click comes a bewildering array of other choices that call up the vast data gathering resources of Advisen. There is a smooth logic to the many choices and sub-choices that are available from Advisen. Whoever is responsible for the web site’s layout has industriously used all space to best advantage; none is wasted, reminding me of a truism about Chicago hog packers—the only part of the pig not used was the squeal.And while Advisen does not hide its bright light under a basket, it does not push with devilish entreaties its other for-hire products. And advertisers have their place, noticeably yes; but not overwhelmingly so.Overall for broadly providing in a pleasing and accommodating format the current, imperative developments concerning the insurance industry in the US for a reasonable charge, Advisen FPN Professional Edition rates 4 POLIES."

In the interest of candor, he also rated two other competing publications at a similar level, but we were pleased to read his positive comments.

Spencer Educational Foundation Musings

I am fortunate to be able to serve on the Board of Directors of the Spencer Educational Foundation. Every fall, we have an annual planning session to discuss our strategy and budget for the next year. Each of these sessions is hosted by a member company. This particular one was hosted by FM Global.

Through their generosity, we were able to visit the FM Global research campus in West Glocester, R.I.. As you might imagine, it is a little out of the way. The research campus is an amazing reflection to their commitment to reduce the likelihood and cost of property loss. We had an opportunity to see the Global Fire Technology Lab where they conduct research on topics. We had the opportunity to see them conduct a test burn of almost 800 gallons of 200 proof ethanol (see my great camera phone shot) to evaluate fire extinguishing approaches. This is part of an overall review of the protection standards for ethanol processing facilities. We also visited their Natural Hazards Lab and saw them launch 2 x 4"s into plywood to illustrate the impact of windborne objects on walls.

During the formal part of the Spencer Foundation planning session, we discussed how to best continue our mission of supporting education of risk management professionals. We hope to be able to continue our funding of scholarships at a good level in the next year. We also discussed how to expand the impact of our new website in the marketplace.