The Woodlands Financial Group Has a Focus on Growth

March 14, 2013Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Richard “Gordy” Bunch, president and CEO of The Woodlands Financial Group, readily concedes that starting a personal lines-focused insurance business in Texas in 2001

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Judge Denies Wells Fargo Attempt to Block Financial Crisis Suit

February 13, 2013Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle1 CommentsA federal judge on Tuesday denied Wells Fargo’s attempt to beat back a financial-crisis lawsuit by arguing it conflicted with an earlier settlement.

District Judge Rosemary Collyer in Washington, who is supervising the 2012 multi-bank $25 billion mortgage misconduct settlement, said she did not agree with the bank’s assessment of that settlement.

But she declined to rule on the new Justice Department lawsuit, which is seeking damages and penalties for more than 10 years of alleged misconduct related to government-insured Federal Housing Administration loans, and left a federal court in New York to determine whether the two conflict.

The fourth-largest U.S. bank had asked Collyer in November to rule that the government violated the terms of the multi-bank deal in filing a new case.

Wells Fargo said the earlier consent judgment “wiped the slate clean” for the bank in terms of certain conduct related to its FHA portfolio.

But on Tuesday, Collyer said the language in the settlement “does not have the meaning ascribed to it by Wells Fargo,” and denied the bank’s request for an order enforcing the settlement.

A spokesman for Wells Fargo had no immediate comment. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, which brought the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment

 

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Torus Adds Media Liability, Financial Institution Coverages

November 9, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Torus has expanded its U.S. management liability and professional lines practice with the addition of two new specialty insurance products: media liability coverage for the media & entertainment segment; and financial institution bonds offering for the financial institution customer segment.

Torus has also appointed four new executives to its U.S. team. They include:

Sharon Raksnis, senior vice president, head of Financial Institutions;Craig Grant, vice president, head of Private Company Management Liability;Christopher Cooper, assistant vice president, Media Liability Practice Leader; &Christine Cook, assistant vice president senior underwriter, Private Company Management Liability.

Torus has also added commercial E&O coverage to ESCAPE, Torus’ online portal for US brokers aimed at streamlining the quote-to-bind-to-issue process. With these enhancements, ESCAPE is now available for 75 E&O classes and enables producers to quote and bind multiple coverages under a single premium. ESCAPE was first launched by Torus in 2010 for brokers selling umbrella and high excess liability policies to small businesses.

 Torus has expanded its professional liability product portfolio. Effective immediately Torus will underwrite financial institution bonds (

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Lockton Expands Financial Services Team in Kansas City

October 5, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Privately held insurance broker, Lockton, recently expanded its global financial services team with the hiring of Michael Born in Kansas City.

Born joins the company as vice president providing expertise in the areas of data security, privacy liability, media and specialty errors and omissions insurance. He is a member of Lockton’s Global Technology and Privacy Practice.

With 20 years of experience in the professional liability insurance industry, Born most recently held the position of senior vice president and manager of Underwriting at ThinkRisk Underwriting Agency LLC. Prior to his tenure at ThinkRisk, he held key positions with Axis Pro Insurance, Media Professional, Zurich American, and American Family Insurance. Born also spent five years in private legal practice focusing on insurance related matters.

Source: Lockton

 

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ACLU Scholarship offers Financial Aid for College to Utah Youth Activists

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media

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Lawmaker Warns of New Cyber Threats to U.S. Financial Networks

October 5, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle2 CommentsThe head of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said on Thursday that significant new cyber threats to U.S. financial networks appeared to be emerging from an “unusual” source.

Committee Chairman Mike Rogers did not specifically identify the purported new threat nor its origin but referred several times to what he described as Iran’s growing cyber espionage capabilities.

“I think they’re (Iran) closer than we’d all like them to be to come in and cause trouble on our financial services networks,” the Michigan Republican told a cybersecurity conference hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Classified briefings about the possible new keyboard-launched threats may have revived prospects for stalled measures aimed at boosting cybersecurity in the “lame duck” congressional session after the Nov. 6 election, he said.

These secret briefings for lawmakers have highlighted a “threat that would target networks here from an unusual – careful here – source that has some very real consequences if we are not capable to deal with it,” he said.

The concern was with nation states that are gaining a cyberwarfare capability beyond those that “we often talk about” Rogers said. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report last year said the governments of China and Russia were expected to remain “aggressive and capable” collectors of U.S. trade secrets, particularly in cyberspace.

Iran says it has been adding to its cyber clout since its disputed nuclear program was damaged in 2010 by malicious computer code known as Stuxnet, reliably reported to have been developed by the United States.

A U.S. financial services industry group last month warned banks, brokerages and insurers to be on heightened alert for cyber attacks after the websites of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase experienced service disruptions.

Customers of Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial Services have reported trouble accessing their websites, as unusually high traffic appeared to crash or slow down the systems in the past two weeks.

Rogers on Thursday reiterated his concerns about alleged Chinese cyber theft of U.S. trade secrets, describing Beijing as “ferocious about seeking information.” He also cited what he called media reports that China likely was behind a disruption of a White House computer system disclosed this week.

“What people don’t realize is that we are in war today in cyberspace,” he said. “And this is the biggest national security threat I can think of that we are not prepared to handle in this country today.”

A Senate bill backed by President Barack Obama that would have allowed for greater information-sharing between intelligence agencies and private companies has met opposition from both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which objected to additional regulation, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which is worried about privacy issues.

Rogers and Representative C.A. Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the committee, have introduced separate bipartisan legislation that would clear the private sector to share information on cyber threats with the federal government and others on a voluntary basis.

 

 

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Financial Advisors Rarely Offer Life Insurance

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Oklahoma Joins Suit Challenging Dodd-Frank Financial Overhaul

September 21, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle1 Comments

The State of Oklahoma has joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Dodd-Frank, a financial overhaul designed to

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Yantis, Nelson Join Mercury Financial Group in Texas

June 26, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Mercury Financial Group has added Gail Yantis, vice president, life specialist in its greater Austin/San Antonio, Texas, service area. Joining Yantis will be Ricci Nelson who will serve as marketing specialist.

Yantis and Nelson join Mercury after a successful tenure at another firm.

Mercury is based in Dallas with specialists across the country working in major financial institutions, Wall Street-based firms, and property/casualty firms.

Source: Mercury Financial Group

 

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Financial Advisors Rarely Offer Life Insurance

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New York City at Greatest Financial Risk from Hurricanes: CoreLogic

June 7, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleCommentsWhen people think of hurricane damage they usually think of Miami or New Orleans, but a new report suggests the greatest financial risk of all may be much farther north: the greater New York City area.

Data analysis firm CoreLogic said in a new report released on Thursday that the U.S. metropolitan area at greatest risk, both in the number of properties affected and the potential value of damage, was New York City. For the firm’s purposes, the area also includes Long Island and northern New Jersey.

“The summer of 2011 gave us some startling insight into the damage that even a weak storm can cause in the New York City metro area,” CoreLogic vice president Howard Botts said.

“Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm as it passed through New Jersey and New York City, but the impact of the storm was still estimated at as much as $6 billion.”

It is much more likely that a hurricane will make landfall in Miami than New York. In 2012, according to landfall tables from Colorado State University, the odds are 5.3 percent for Miami and 0.2 percent for New York City. Over 50 years, the odds rise to 95.5 percent for Miami and 6.6 percent for New York.

Still, the risk is there, particularly from flooding. While most people associate hurricane damage with wind, the storm surge from rising waters caused by cyclones has just as much impact, if not more.

That was painfully evident to residents of the northeastern states in particular after last summer’s Hurricane Irene. Although the insured impact of Irene on the New York City area was relatively limited, one of the insurance industry’s nightmares has always been a major hurricane traveling up the Hudson River and striking the city and its environs.

By some estimates, such an event could cause $100 billion just in insured losses, with economic damage some order of magnitude greater than that.

CoreLogic estimated the property at risk in the New York City area was worth some $168 billion.

In total, CoreLogic said, more than four million homes in the United States are at risk from flood damage related to hurricanes, with over $700 billion in property potentially vulnerable.

There are 2.2 million homes worth more than $500 billion at risk along the Atlantic coast, with another 1.8 million homes worth $200 billion imperiled along the Gulf coast.

About 35 percent of the at-risk homes are in the state of Florida alone and another 12 percent or so in Louisiana, the firm said. In terms of value of property, more than 40 percent of the risk is concentrated in Florida and New York.

 

Copyright 2012 Reuters. Click for restrictions.Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetCategories: East NewsTopics: coastal property, CoreLogic, hurricane losses, New York hurricane lossesHave a hot lead? Email us at newsdesk

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FDIC Outlines Strategy For When Big Financial Firms Fail

May 14, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle11 Comments

The next time a big bank or financial firm fails, regulators hope to avoid a major blow to the economy by seizing the firm’s parent company while allowing its healthy subsidiaries to continue operations, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says.

FDIC Acting Chairman Martin Gruenberg outlined the agency’s strategy in a speech last Thursday. Under the 2010 financial overhaul law, the agency has the authority to seize and dismantle big financial firms that could collapse and threaten the broader system. The aim is to avoid another taxpayer bailout of Wall Street banks in another financial crisis. The FDIC’s power extends to financial firms other than banks, such as insurance companies.

Gruenberg said that under the strategy, the FDIC would take over a failing firm’s parent company but allow its healthy subsidiaries to continue operating. He said that would reduce disruption and permit normal financial transactions.

Because the subsidiaries would keep operating, their trading and other relationships with other big financial institutions would also continue normally, Gruenberg said. That would “mitigate systemic consequences,” he said in the speech at a Federal Reserve conference in Chicago. That means it would reduce the chance that big financial firms closely connected to each other would fall like dominoes.

In shutting down a firm’s parent company, the FDIC would transfer its assets, especially holdings in its subsidiaries, to a new “bridge” company under the strategy. The firm’s shareholders would lose their investment. Its creditors would receive equity stakes in the “bridge” company.

Eventually, the bridge company would become a healthy company in private hands, Gruenberg said.

“We believe this strategy holds the best possibility of achieving our key goals of maintaining financial stability, holding investors in the failed firm accountable for the losses of the company, and producing a new, viable private-sector company out of the process,” he said.

FDIC officials have cited the example of Lehman Brothers. Its collapse in September 2008 in the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history precipitated the financial meltdown that plunged the economy into the Great Recession.

Despite Lehman’s extensive losses, there were substantial valuable assets in some of its subsidiaries, especially its European operation based in London, FDIC officials say. When Lehman failed, that operation had to be dissolved under British law. The FDIC strategy would permit such an operation to continue.

The American Bankers Association, the industry’s biggest lobbying group, said the FDIC’s strategy is an important step toward ending the doctrine of “too big to fail” and government bailouts of big financial institutions.

“In any failure, it’s the equity owners that should take losses,” Frank Keating, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “This strategy assures that, but would continue the operations of the firm going forward to minimize market disruptions.”

 

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Kaufman Financial Group Names Derigiotis Director at R.B. Jones

May 10, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Kaufman Financial Group, based in Farmington Hills, Mich., appointed David Derigiotis to a director position at its wholly owned subsidiary, R.B. Jones Inc.

Derigiotis joined Burns & Wilcox, Kaufman Financial Group’s largest subsidiary, in 2008, and has served as director of Professional Liability since 2010. He has been instrumental to the growth and success of the company’s Professional Liability Center of Excellence.

Derigiotis will be responsible for developing the future growth strategy for R.B. Jones, increasing its market presence, and introducing new and innovative products. He also will assume management responsibility for the R.B. Jones Leisure and Recreation program.

Prior to joining Burns & Wilcox, Derigiotis was a professional liability underwriter with two national A rated carriers in Chicago.

He currently serves as a faculty member for Insurance Journal’s Academy of Insurance.

 

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