Brown & Brown posted a rise in first-quarter profit on Monday as the insurance brokerage earned more in commissions and fees, while investment returns also improved. The insurance industry has cemented its reputation as 'recession-proof' as corporate and government spending for policies is typically steady and does not fluctuate due to cutbacks in budgets or amid an economic slowdown. Insurance brokerages such as Brown & Brown serve as a bridge between an insurer and customers, helping clients find a policy which best suits their needs. The company's core commissions and fees increased to $1.19 billion in the three months ended March. 31, from $1.08 billion, a year earlier. Meanwhile, a higher interest rate environment has also helped investment income at insurers, who invest a chunk of their cash in safe-haven assets. The broader equity capital markets have also rallied this year. The company's investment income climbed to $18 million in the reported quarter from $7 million in the year-ago period. Brown & Brown is one of the largest independent insurance brokerages in the U.S. specializing in risk management. It operates through four business segments - retail, national programs, wholesale brokerage and services. The company's total revenue rose 12.7% to $1.26 billion in the quarter. It posted adjusted earnings of $1.14 per share, up from 96 cents a year earlier.    

Chubb today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Healthy Paws, a U.S.-based managing general agent (MGA) specializing in pet insurance, from Aon plc, a leading global professional services firm. The transaction positions Chubb to expand in a niche market with substantial growth potential. Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, were not disclosed. "We are delighted to welcome Healthy Paws to the Chubb family," said John Lupica, Vice Chairman, Chubb Group and President, North America Insurance. "Together, we will be able to extend the reach and amplify the impact of this esteemed pet insurance brand in a vastly underpenetrated market. As part of Chubb, Healthy Paws will empower more pet owners to fund medical care and navigate the rising costs of veterinary care." Since 2013, Chubb has been the exclusive underwriter of the Healthy Paws pet insurance program for Aon. The long-standing Chubb and Healthy Paws relationship positions the combination for accelerated growth while supporting a seamless transition for employees, customers and other business partners. "Chubb has been an important part of our journey for more than a decade and is an ideal partner to enable us to continue our mission on a larger scale and offer even greater value to the pet community," said Jon Harris, who is currently President and COO of Healthy Paws and will continue leading the business. "There are tremendous opportunities ahead to expand the positive impact we have on pets and pet parents." Founded in 2009, Healthy Paws has been a trailblazer in the pet insurance domain and currently serves more than 500,000 dogs and cats in the U.S. The company provides program and claims administration via a digital proprietary platform.          

Billionaire businessman Don Hankey made headlines in early April when his company, Knight Specialty Insurance, provided the $175 million bond that Donald Trump posted in his New York civil fraud case.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a big Trump fan,” Hankey told The Wall Street Journal this week. “I’ve voted for him in the past. And I think he’s business friendly. And that’s what I’m looking for.”

It isn’t the first time Hankey has financially backed a troubled real-estate developer.

In Los Angeles, where he is based, Hankey’s companies have bankrolled some of the area’s most ambitious—and sometimes eccentric—mansion developers. Sometimes, they did so just as those developers began to fall into financial jeopardy.

Perhaps most notably, Hankey provided more than $100 million in financing for The One, a scandal-plagued Bel-Air megamansion once slated to ask as much as $500 million. The 105,000-square-foot estate was eventually sold at auction for a comparably paltry $126 million in 2022 after its developer, the bombastic and volatile spec-home builder Nile Niami, defaulted on loan payments.

Priyesh R. Bhakta, president of Hankey Capital, said Hankey isn’t put off by strong personalities, so long as the underlying business fundamentals are strong.

“There are eccentric personalities in our business…we will tolerate those eccentricities if they’re smart and their business plan makes sense,” he said.

Not So Much ‘The One’

In L.A. real-estate circles, Hankey is perhaps best known for backing Niami, whose decadelong odyssey to build The One, complete with its own nightclub and five swimming pools, captivated the real-estate industry amid delays, cost overruns and defaults. When Hankey issued the initial loan of $82.5 million, The One was about 80% complete. The financing was slated to help Niami pay back other creditors and apply the finishing touches.

Bhakta said that Hankey made the loan because the company was confident that the U.S. single-family home market would continue to deliver $100 million-plus deals, as the economy created more and more billionaires. At the time, he said, Niami was considered a pioneer in the spec-home market. He had three or four unsold mansions on his books. Hankey figured that once Niami sold those, the developer would have a favorable cash position.

Ultimately, The One unraveled along with Niami’s personal life. Following a 2017 divorce from his longtime partner Yvonne Niami, the developer began to get a reputation in the real-estate industry as a party boy with erratic ideas.

“Sometimes, you look at someone’s track record, but that doesn’t necessarily correlate directly to what their future is going to look like,” Bhakta said. “In this case, his [wife] turned out to be the more rational person in that relationship and she kept him grounded. When he didn’t have that grounding, he kind of went crazy and unfortunately things unraveled there.”

Rayni Williams, a luxury real-estate agent who worked with Niami on the deal, said Hankey gave Niami more chances than many lenders might have. “I think he was rooting for him to succeed,” she said.

In October 2021, after issuing Niami several extensions on his loans, Hankey filed a foreclosure action on The One, with the balance of the loan having ballooned to more than $100 million. Niami responded by putting the property into bankruptcy. The property was ultimately sold at auction for a fraction of its onetime projected asking price, leaving a string of lenders vying for their money back from the proceeds.

While Hankey was first in line to be repaid, his position was challenged in court by another of the creditors, an entity associated with Canadian investors Julien and Lucien Remillard. In court papers, that entity accused Hankey of “unfair and unscrupulous predatory business practices,” alleging it had engaged in a “scheme to secure payment of exorbitant default interest payments and potentially misappropriate a valuable asset while leaving other creditors ‘high and dry.’ ”

So far, Hankey has recouped some of his cash, but is fighting for the remaining balance in court. Neither the Niamis nor the Remillards could be reached for comment.

Bhakta said he couldn’t say much about the case because it is pending. “We’re still defending ourselves there,” he said. “But [litigation] comes with the territory.”

Foreclosure Is ‘The Reality of the Business’

While Bhakta said it is rare, Hankey Capital has foreclosed on some of its developer clients.

“We really try to avoid having to foreclose, but unfortunately, that’s the reality of the business,” Bhakta said.

In the case of L.A. developer Nicholas Keros, in 2019, Hankey’s company foreclosed on and took title to a five-bedroom spec mansion in the prestigious Bird Streets area of the Hollywood Hills. The roughly 14,000-square-foot property had walls of glass, walnut millwork, a steam room, a dry sauna and an infinity pool.

Hankey took a loss on the property, selling it for $25 million. That was less than the roughly $23 million loan the company made to Keros plus the approximately $5 million to $10 million investment made by Hankey to finish construction on the house once the foreclosure was completed, Hankey said. Keros couldn’t be reached for comment.

While other spec home properties Hankey has financed have sold for significantly less than initially projected, Bhakta said Hankey usually gets its money out safely. He said the company tries to keep its basis on each project low, rarely lending more than around 60% of the perceived value of a home.

Kris Halliday, a luxury home builder from Australia, said Hankey provided a $25 million bridge loan so that Halliday could repay a construction loan before he sold the 20,000-square-foot Malibu spec home he completed in 2022. The property had floor-to-ceiling motorized glass walls, a 2,000-gallon aquarium and a 20,000-gallon koi pond. Its initial asking price was $74.8 million.

After a series of price cuts, the house sold to an unidentified buyer at auction last year for just $26.5 million. While Halliday said he was “very disappointed” with that price, it was enough to make Hankey whole again. He said he couldn’t fault the lender for the outcome.

“My experience with Hankey was everything they promised, and they delivered [the money] in the timeframe that they said they would do it,” he said.

The Richest Man You’ve Never Heard Of

A Los Angeles native, Hankey, 80, originally made his name as the king of subprime car loans. His Westlake Financial Services works with tens of thousands of U.S. car dealerships to provide car loans to borrowers with bad credit.

In an interview, he said he started in that business in the 1970s after his father died, leaving behind an interest in a Ford dealership. A self-described “finance guy,” he and his mother bought out the other partners in the dealership and slowly turned it into one of the most profitable in the region, turning to car-loan financing for additional revenue. For car buyers with bad credit but a good down payment, Hankey would finance purchases.

“Instead of losing deals, we decided to carry our own paper,” he said.

Hankey said he got interested in real estate after making a play to buy the property where the dealership was located. He had heard that the owners had plans to turn it into a shopping center.

“I made an effort and finally was able to buy the real estate underneath the Ford dealership to secure my land,” he said. After seeing how much the land appreciated in value, he became a “big believer” in real estate, he said.

The Hankey empire has since expanded to encompass real estate, insurance (through Knight Specialty Insurance), finance and technology companies. It posted revenues of $4.6 billion in 2023, according to its website, and had $23.4 billion in assets. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index pegs Hankey’s net worth at about $7.5 billion.

White-haired with a deep tan, Hankey and his wife, Debbie Hankey, own a mansion in Malibu, Hankey said. He said he is an avid horseman and tennis player, and gets chauffeured around in a Mercedes Maybach.

Bhakta said Hankey, despite his advanced age, is in the office before sunrise almost every day, often by 5:45 a.m. “He tries to be the first one here,” he said.

The Hankey Group of companies includes eight companies, two of which invest in real estate: Hankey Investment Company, which owns and develops its own real estate, and Hankey Capital, a bridge-loan provider, Bhakta said. Hankey Capital has about $1.4 billion in outstanding loans today, Bhakta said. Its bread and butter is “helping high net-worth families acquire real estate,” Bhakta said, noting that most of the company’s borrowers have at least about $50 million in net worth.

Those families are willing to pay slightly higher interest rates if it means being able to close quickly. Bhakta said Hankey’s rates could be as much as 3% higher than a traditional bank or other private lender. Made up mostly of commercial loans, Hankey Capital’s loan portfolio is about 15% composed of single-family mansion bridge loans, Bhakta said. It is an area that most traditional lenders shy away from, Bhakta said.

“It’s very risky,” Bhakta said.

Hankey to Trump’s Rescue

Hankey said he reached out to Trump’s representatives after having read about the former president’s race to secure a nearly $500 million bond in his civil fraud case. The courts later said they would accept a far smaller bond of $175 million.

Bhakta said Hankey considered providing Trump’s bond financing even at the higher amount, though he said the former president didn’t have the cash on hand to collateralize it. As a result, Hankey’s team began evaluating Trump’s real estate, including Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach. One red flag, he said, was that the property is zoned exclusively for use as a private club and couldn’t automatically be turned into a single-family compound. That significantly impacts its value, he said.

If that zoning restriction remains, “it wouldn’t have the same value that [Trump] thinks it has,” Bhakta said. “Thankfully, we didn’t go down that road,” he said.

Ultimately, once the bond requirement was reduced, the bond could be fully collateralized by Trump’s liquid assets, meaning cash, stocks and bonds, Bhakta said. “It was a very good business decision,” he said.

Hankey declined to comment on the terms of the bond, but a person close to the Trump Organization said the auto billionaire’s firm is making a 1% commission on the deal, netting it $1.75 million.

The New York attorney general’s office has taken issue with Hankey’s bond, noting that his company isn’t registered to issue appeal bonds in New York. It has questioned whether Knight is financially capable of fulfilling its obligation to pay the bond if Trump defaults.

Bhakta described the scrutiny as “a proctology exam.” He has yet to decide, he said, if the limelight has been “a net positive.”

“We have gotten hate mail, all of us. But, by the same token, we’ve gotten praise mail,” he said. “We’re big boys about it, trying to take it with a grain of salt and just keep our head down and keep working.”

Hankey said he didn’t expect the level of scrutiny that the company has been put under. “I thought this might go down quietly,” he said.

Global reinsurer Munich Re has announced a preliminary net profit of €2.1 billion for the first quarter of 2024, as the firm highlights a better than expected operational performance across all lines of business. Munich Re will release its full Q1 2024 results on May 8th, but has today provided some preliminary figures which suggest a very strong start to the year for the company. At €2.1 billion, the German reinsurer notes that the Group significantly surpassed the mean value derived from the estimates of 11 financial analysts of €1.476 billion for the quarter. In property and casualty reinsurance, Munich Re has reported a combined ratio approximately 75%, which the firm attributes mostly to below-average major loss costs. This marks an improvement on the 86.5% combined ratio achieved in Q1 2023. In its life and health reinsurance arm, the carrier has reported a total technical result of roughly €600 million for Q1 2024, a solid improvement on the €320 million seen a year earlier. ERGO, the firm’s primary insurance business, achieved a net result of €300 million, compared with €219 million a year earlier. On the asset side of the balance sheet, Munich Re highlights that a favorable capital market environment helped it achieve a high investment result, with an ROI of approximately 3.8%, and a positive currency result. “Munich Re still anticipates a net result of €5bn for the 2024 financial year. Surpassing this target has become more likely due to the Q1 result,” says the reinsurer. In February, Munich Re announced a net result of €4.6 billion for the 2023 financial year.      

INSTANDA, the global provider of no-code insurance platform technology, today announced Jamie Boyer will now serve as the organization’s group configuration lead. Boyer previously served as INSTANDA’s senior configuration analyst. “Jamie has been instrumental in helping implement INSTANDA’s leading-edge technology to carriers and MGAs looking for speed-to-market and operational improvements,” said Tim Hardcastle, CEO and co-founder of INSTANDA. “His passion for putting the power back in the hands of businesses lends itself to his ability to connect with clients and bring their visions to fruition.” As global configuration lead, Boyer will lead INSTANDA’s global team responsible for working and consulting with clients to build out their products and navigate their software journeys. He will report to INSTANDA’s Head of Client Delivery EMEA Adam Bollands. Before joining INSTANDA in 2018, Boyer was a principal consultant with 1insurer, formally Innovation Group Software, and a project manager for Innovation Group North America. With more than 20 years of experience in insurance and IT, Boyer has an extensive understanding of customer-facing policy and claim implementation matters, as well as a deep knowledge of administration software, reporting and analytics options within real-world insurance environments. Additionally, Boyer’s ability to explore creative, practical problem-solving is an invaluable asset to INSTANDA and its partners. “Before INSTANDA, I was skeptical about nocode technology. I quickly realized through demonstration that a configurable solution was possible for businesses to take ownership of the process without the need for an extensive IT department,” Boyer noted. “As INSTANDA continues to stake its claim as a major player in insurance innovation, our goal will be to take a more global, consistent approach to configuration efficiencies.” Boyer, who resides in Tampa, Florida, was INSTANDA’s second North American hire in 2018. He received his bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Miami University. About INSTANDA INSTANDA offers a complete digital platform for innovative insurers, including more than 80 carriers, MGAs and brokers in Europe, North America, UK, Japan, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. Named one of the world’s Top 50 InsurTechs for 2023 by CB Insights, INSTANDA is the insurance industry’s first no-code core insurance platform that allows innovative insurers to digitize their entire business as well as break into new markets with quick-to-market new products while simultaneously overcoming the drawbacks of legacy IT systems and driving digital transformation. For more information, please visit instanda.com/us/ and follow us @instandaF2X on Twitter and INSTANDA on LinkedIn.

Three former workers in a Northern California office of the Zurich American Insurance Co. who were fired after taking “off-the-record” paid time off were awarded more than $80 million in damages by a Sacramento jury Thursday, Sacramento attorney Lawrance Bohm announced. The case stemmed from a lawsuit originally filed in 2018 that went to trial after Zurich American declined settlement offers starting at $150,000 for each of the three plaintiffs who worked at the insurer’s Gold River offices, Bohm said in an interview. “I’m jubilant,” Bohm said. “It is shocking for an American-based insurance company that provides coverage to 90 percent of the Fortune 500 to have made a zero-dollar offer... This is vindication.” Zurich American spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler said in an email response to The Sacramento Bee that the company does not comment on litigation, “So I have no comment to offer you.” Wednesday’s verdict included damages for economic harm, reputational damages and $25 million in punitive damages for each of the employees — Melinda Brantley, Nicholas Lardie and Daniel Koos — who were part of Zurich American’s workers’ compensation division, Bohm spokesman Daniel Harary said in announcing the $80,252,412 verdict details. Bohm’s spokesman said the three plaintiffs were fired in December 2017 after they followed a supervisor’s policy of taking “off the record” time off as an incentive for hard work. The days off were called “Omen days,” referring to then-Assistant Vice President Chris Omen, court papers say. “Omen offered free paid time off (‘PTO’) based on performance,” court papers say. “Employees in Omen’s department referred to the free paid time off as ‘Omen Days.’ “Omen’s free paid time off was used to reward employees who were performing at a high level or reached certain goals. The free paid time off rewards did not require any requests or entries in the official PTO system. “If an employee used paid time off approved by Omen, the employee was instructed not to use any of Zurich’s official paid time off. On most occasions. Omen instructed the employee to ‘take a day off or delete the time off requests in the system and stated that ‘it’s on me,’ indicating that the employee earned the free paid time off. “The entire Rancho Cordova branch was aware of and benefited from this unofficial rewards program.” The three were fired days before Christmas 2017 after a brief investigation by the company, Bohm said. Zurich American argued in court filings that the employees were fired after “time theft” that resulted in the three being paid a total of more than $100,000 over two years. “Theft is not justified simply because your boss told you to do it,” the company argued. “Plaintiffs are three former managers at Zurich insurance company who were discovered to have under reported paid time off (PTO) at work. “They admitted to engaging in this activity and explained it away by saying that their supervisor told them to do so.” Bohm said Zurich American “maliciously defamed three very good people from our Sacramento community,” and that his clients did not want to be involved in a lawsuit. Bohm initially offered to settle the case for $150,000 for each plaintiff but was rebuffed, he said. In 2021, he tried again, offering to settle for $500,000 each but was turned down. Finally, before trial began in Sacramento Superior Court last month, he offered to settle for $2 million per plaintiff but was told no, he said. “Zurich has had years to prevent this and do right,” Bohm said, adding that company supervisors spent 71 minutes investigating the allegations against the employees before firing them. “For a company that prides itself on fairness, that’s frightening,” he said. “Thousands of us in California have claims being handled by Zurich. “If this is the way it treats its employees what does that mean about what we can expect from them when we need them?”    

Mergers and acquisitions among insurance brokers and agents declined 18% in the first quarter, falling to the lowest level of deals since the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, according to a report released Friday by Optis Partners LLC. A drop-off in deals by two of the biggest acquirers over the past several years – Acrisure Inc. and PCF Insurance Services – accounted for much of the decline, the Chicago-based investment banking and financial consulting firm said in the report. “On a trailing 12-month basis, we’re back to levels that we last witnessed at the end of 2020,” said Steve Germundson, a partner at Optis. BroadStreet Partners Inc. announced the most deals in the quarter with 29, followed by Hub International Ltd. with 12, Inszone Insurance Services with 10, and Keystone Agency Partners LLC with eight. Private-equity-backed buyers and private firms with significant outside financial support accounted for 71% of deals announced in the quarter. Publicly traded brokers announced 12 deals in the quarter, with Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. accounting for seven of them. Despite the reduction in deals by several previously highly active buyers, demand for agencies remains high, and prices for top-performing companies is strong, said Timothy J. Cunningham, Optis’ managing partner. “We don’t expect this to change any time soon,” he said.    

Progressive Corp. intends to list several of its office buildings across the United States for sale as it consolidates office buildings amid a changing work environment, a company spokesman said. Among those that will be offloaded are its Campus 1 facility in Mayfield, Ohio and the Progressive Home campus in St. Petersburg, Florida, according to an email. Also slated for sale are the Colorado Springs campus in Colorado, the Riverview campus in Riverview, Florida, and Progressive Fleet & Specialty in Carmel, Indiana. "As we continue to grow and reimagine our workforce, Progressive offers flexible work options for many of our employees with most people choosing to work from their homes," a Progressive spokesman said in the email. "Our current office locations have always been a mixture of owned and leased spaces," it said. "As we continue to look for ways to operate as efficiently as possible while providing the best for our employees and customers, our Real Estate team has completed a comprehensive market analysis and will begin marketing efforts for the sale and/or lease of some buildings involved in previously announced consolidations." Progressive first announced last July it would consolidate several of its properties in Northeast Ohio and across the United States, with the company planning to hold the locations within its portfolio until the latest announcement. Progressive said It will continue to monitor and review office utilization in order to make the best decisions for employees and the company.

Progressive Corp. net income climbed more than five-fold to $2.33 billion in the first quarter as its combined ratio improved 12.9 points to 86.1.

A year earlier the company posted net income of $447.9 million. First quarter net premiums written increased 18% to $18.96 billion."

Most operating entities of Progressive Corp. currently have a Best’s Financial Strength Rating of A+ (Superior).

 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday designated a pair of widely used industrial chemicals as hazardous substances under the country's Superfund program, accelerating a crackdown on toxic compounds known as "forever chemicals." The rule will require companies to report leaks of two of the most commonly used per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and help pay to clean up existing contamination. The EPA last week announced its first drinking water standards to guard against PFAS pollution. PFAS are a family of thousands of chemicals used in consumer and commercial products like firefighting foams, nonstick pans and stain resistant fabrics. They have been linked to cancer and other health concerns, and are often called forever chemicals because they do not easily break down in the human body or the environment. The new rule targets contamination from two PFAS known as PFOA and PFOS. It does not ban the chemicals. The Superfund designations will ensure that those responsible "pay for the costs to clean up pollution threatening the health of communities," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. The Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, known as the Superfund law, allows the EPA and state regulators to undertake or order remediation of hazardous sites and seek reimbursement from site owners, hazardous waste generators, waste transporters and others. The EPA said on Friday it would prioritize enforcement against significant contributors to the release of PFAS, such as federal facilities and manufacturers. The American Chemistry Council, a leading industry trade association, called the rule "severely flawed" on Friday and said the chemicals have not been produced in the United States in nearly a decade. The Superfund program "is an expensive, ineffective and unworkable means to achieve remediation for these chemicals," the group said in a statement. Environmental groups praised the EPA's move. "These designations will give PFAS-contaminated sites the attention they deserve," Earthjustice attorney Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz said in a statement. The new rule, one of the most aggressive moves yet by the Biden administration to regulate PFAS, also makes public funds available for remediation. The regulation could spur additional litigation over liability for PFAS cleanup efforts. Lawsuits filed by public water systems and others accusing major chemical companies of polluting U.S. drinking water with PFAS chemicals led to more than $11 billion in settlements last year.    

A Redfin survey has found that nearly three-quarters (70.3%) of Florida homeowners and over half (51%) of California homeowners have seen a rise in insurance costs or change in coverage in the past year. The survey was fielded to 2,995 homeowners and renters in the United States. According to Redfin’s survey, insurance is top of mind for homeowners in Florida and California, this is mainly due to the fact that those states are the epicentres of the insurance housing crisis. Many homeowners have seen their premiums skyrocket (71.7%), and some have lost coverage altogether because their insurer has dropped them. Roughly one in eight Florida respondents (12%) and one in nine California respondents (10.7%) said their insurance company stopped offering coverage for their home, compared with 8.3% of respondents overall. Intensifying natural disaster risk is the main reason why a number of insurers have been prompted to stop doing business in Florida and California. So far, seven of California’s biggest property insurers have opted to limit new policies in the state amid increasing wildfire risk. And in Florida, eleven insurers have liquidated amid growing flood and storm risk. Other homeowners are worried they will be dropped by their insurer in the future: Over one-quarter (27.7%) of respondents in Florida said they are or have been concerned their insurer may stop offering coverage for their home, compared with 13.5% of respondents in California and 8.9% of respondents as a whole. The average annual US home insurance rate is expected to rise 6% this year to $2,522 after surging 19.8% between 2021 and 2023, according to Insurify. In Florida, the average annual rate is $10,996 – higher than any other state. The survey also found that mounting insurance costs and natural disasters are prompting some people to relocate. In Florida, 11.9% of respondents who plan to move in the next year said that rising insurance costs as a reason for this – roughly twice the national share of 6.2%. In California, 13.1% of people who intend to relocate in the coming year cited concern for natural disasters or climate risks as a reason, compared with 8.8% of respondents nationwide. Nearly 30% are staying in their home with little or no coverage. Almost half (46%) of respondents who lost insurance coverage said they’ve found a new insurer to cover their home. A similar share (44.5%) said they pay a significantly higher premium for coverage than before. While some people are leaving disaster-prone areas, there are still more people moving in than out, a separate Redfin analysis found. Daryl Fairweathe, Redfin Chief Economist said: “Homeowners living in areas where insurance premiums are surging are at risk of seeing their properties gain less value than homeowners in areas with stable premiums – and in some cases, they may even lose money. “Homes with low disaster risk and low insurance costs will likely become increasingly popular, and thus more valuable, as the dangers of climate change intensify.” Additionally, the survey found that only one-third (34%) of homeowners know which natural disasters their insurance covers. With climate disasters on the rise, homeowners should revisit their existing insurance policies so they know exactly what and how much is covered, Fairweather said. In some cases, they may want to purchase an additional policy covering a specific disaster, like fire or flood.

Allstate Corp. said it incurred an estimated $343 million in pretax catastrophe losses from activity in March, raising the total for the first quarter to $731 million from $1.69 billion in the prior-year period. March catastrophe losses included six events. About 80% of the losses related to one hail system, Allstate said in a statement. Losses were partially offset by favorable reserve reestimates on prior events, lowering the monthly pretax loss to $328 million. In mid-March a string of destructive severe convective storms impacted a wide stretch on the middle of the country.

Allstate in 2023 reported estimated pretax catastrophe losses of $1.17 billion in March after waves of powerful and destructive storms rolled across widespread swaths of the country. That accounted for the majority of $1.69 billion in first-quarter 2023 pretax catastrophe losses.

Allstate also continues to raise rates. Allstate brand automobile insurance hikes increased premiums 2.4% in the quarter. Implemented rate increases and inflation in insured home replacement costs increased average brand homeowners gross written premium 11.9% from the prior year, the company said. Allstate plans to hold a first-quarter earnings conference call on May 2.

Marsh McLennan reported consolidated revenue of $6.5 billion in the first quarter of 2024, up 9% from $5.9 billion in the prior-year quarter. On an underlying basis, its revenue also increased 9%. The firm’s operating income also rose 12% from $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion, while its net income reached $1.4 billion. “We had a terrific start to the year, reflecting continued momentum across our business. For the quarter, we generated 9% underlying revenue growth, 14% adjusted EPS growth, and 80 basis points of margin expansion. With this strong start, we are well positioned for another good year in 2024,” said John Doyle, president and CEO. The firm’s risk and insurance services segment, which includes broking arms Marsh and Guy Carpenter, saw revenue grow 9% to $4.3 billion in Q1 2024, while its operating income was up 12%, reaching $1.6 billion. Marsh McLennan’s consulting services, Mercer and Oliver Wyman, reported $2.2 billion in revenue, reflecting a 9% increase in the first three months of the year. The company also highlighted Oliver Wyman’s acquisition of SeaTec Consulting, which was completed in February. In March, Marsh McLennan Agency closed on the previously announced agreement to acquire two leading middle-market agencies in Louisiana – Querbes & Nelson and Louisiana Companies. Within this month, Mercer also completed the acquisition of Vanguard's U.S. Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) business. The firm’s operating income also rose 12% from $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion, while its net income reached $1.4 billion. “We had a terrific start to the year, reflecting continued momentum across our business. For the quarter, we generated 9% underlying revenue growth, 14% adjusted EPS growth, and 80 basis points of margin expansion. With this strong start, we are well positioned for another good year in 2024,” said John Doyle, president and CEO. The firm’s risk and insurance services segment, which includes broking arms Marsh and Guy Carpenter, saw revenue grow 9% to $4.3 billion in Q1 2024, while its operating income was up 12%, reaching $1.6 billion. Marsh McLennan’s consulting services, Mercer and Oliver Wyman, reported $2.2 billion in revenue, reflecting a 9% increase in the first three months of the year. The company also highlighted Oliver Wyman’s acquisition of SeaTec Consulting, which was completed in February. In March, Marsh McLennan Agency closed on the previously announced agreement to acquire two leading middle-market agencies in Louisiana – Querbes & Nelson and Louisiana Companies. Within this month, Mercer also completed the acquisition of Vanguard's U.S. Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) business.