XL Group Appoints Northeast Manager for North America Property Team

January 3, 2013Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

XL Group plc’s North America property business appointed Joseph Moylan as its Northeast regional manager. Based in New York, Moylan will serve property insurance clients throughout the Northeast. He reports to Michele Sansone, Eastern Zone executive in XL’s North America property team.

Moylan joins XL Group from Axis Capital, were he served as senior vice president and regional manager and most recently built a new middle market property underwriting unit in the Northeast. He brings more than 30 years of underwriting property and inland marine risks for Zurich Insurance Company, Home Insurance Company, AIG, and William H. McGee & Co., among others.

XL Group plc’s insurance companies offer property, casualty, professional and specialty insurance products globally. XL Group plc, through its subsidiaries, is a global insurance and reinsurance company providing property, casualty and specialty products to industrial, commercial and professional firms, insurance companies and other enterprises throughout the world. Its principal offices are located in Dublin, Ireland.

 

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UMass Amherst Scientists Forecast Warmer, Wetter Northeast Winters

December 14, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

A new high-resolution climate study by University of Massachusetts Amherst climate scientists — the first to apply regional climate models to examine likely near-term changes in temperature and precipitation across the U.S. Northeast — suggests temperatures are going to be significantly warmer in all seasons in the next 30 years, especially in winter.

Also, they project that winters will be wetter, with more rain likely than snow.

Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, Michael Rawlins and Raymond Bradley of the Climate System Research Center at UMass Amherst, with Henry Diaz of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA), provide the highest resolution climate projections to date for the Northeast from Pennsylvania to Maine.

Winter Contracting, Snow Season Expected to Be Shorter

The study used data from multiple climate model simulations run at greatly improved resolution.

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Employer Costs for Employees Lowest in South, Highest in Northeast

September 28, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticle3 Comments

Total employer costs for employees in private industry ranges from $26.14 per hour in the South to $32.98 in the Northeast.

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same costs are $28.06 in the Midwest and $30.01 in the West.

Overall, compensation costs among private industry employers in the United States averaged $28.80 per hour worked in June 2012. Wages and salaries, at $20.27 per hour, accounted for 70.4 percent of these costs, while benefits, at $8.52, made up the remaining 29.6 percent.

The costs ranged within each region, with total compensation costs of $24.44 in the East South Central division to $33.47 in New England.

BLS used compensation data from June 2012. The agency measures the average cost to employers for wages, salaries and benefits per employee hour worked. Benefits include health, life and disability insurance; workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare; and paid leave including vacation, holiday and sick days.

The data cover private industry only and exclude self-employed and farm and private household workers. The costs were collected from a sample of 47,400 occupations from about 9,500 establishments in private industry.

Regional Costs

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ACE USA Appoints Executive Officer for Northeast Region

October 12, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

ACE USA, the U.S.-based retail operations of the ACE Group, appointed Mitchell Schmidt as senior vice president and regional executive officer for ACE USA’s Northeast region.

Schmidt will be based in Boston, and will be responsible for setting and driving the overall strategic direction for ACE USA’s Northeast region. He will work collaboratively with the Northeast regional team to oversee all business development, retention and underwriting activities, establish distribution strategies, and service delivery to middle and large account commercial customers. He will report to Ed Zaccaria, division president of ACE USA’s regional operations.

Karen Sothern, who has served as senior vice president and regional executive officer for ACE USA’s Northeast region since 2002, now assumes a new global role as change management officer for acquisitions, for the ACE Group, reporting to Evan Greenberg, chief executive officer of ACE Limited.

With more than 15 years in the insurance industry, Schmidt most recently served as senior vice president and national underwriting manager of ACE USA’s custom casualty and public entity units. He has held several senior underwriting positions at ACE, including serving as Western Zone manager, with responsibility for the excess liability and custom casualty product offerings for five of the nine ACE USA regions.

Schmidt joined ACE in 2003 from Chubb Insurance Group, where he held several branch and regional casualty management and underwriting positions, including Midwest regional excess casualty manager.

The ACE Group is one of the world’s largest multi-line property/casualty insurers. With operations in 53 countries, ACE provides commercial and personal property/casualty insurance, personal accident supplemental health insurance, reinsurance, and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. ACE Group is a division of Zurich, Switzerland-headquartered ACE Limited.

 

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SIAA Adds 10 New Agency Members in Northeast

May 14, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

The Strategic Insurance Agency Alliance (SIAA), a national alliance of over 4,000 independent insurance agencies, said it added 10 new agency members in the Northeast region in April

The new members are: Sutton & Tarantino Insurance of Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; Rogowski-Verrette Insurance of Worcester, Mass.; Millstone Community Insurance of Pittsburgh; Landis Insurance Services of Vineland, N.J.; DR & Associates Insurance Services of Danbury, Conn.; Insuramerica of Buffalo, N.Y.; Valentine Insurance of Catskill, N.Y.; Mike Marsh Insurance Agency of Bedford, N.H.; Divine Insurance of Providence, R.I.; and Angle Planning Concepts of Dover, Del.

Across the country, SIAA added 45 new members in April. Among them, 33 had been captive agents and are new to the independent agency system.

SIAA members created more than $780 million in new premium growth in 2011. Since it’s inception in 1995, SIAA has signed over 4,000 new members. SIAA is dedicated to the creation, retention and growth of the independent insurance agency distribution system.

 

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Warm Weather, Dry Conditions Could Mean More Wildfires in Northeast

April 12, 2012Email ThisPrintNewslettersTweetArticleComments

Northeastern states are not known for frequent wildfires and brushfires. But that could be changing this spring as the region faces record-high temperatures and unusually dry conditions.

“With more than 15,000 temperature records broken in the U.S. in March 2012 alone, combined with low precipitation and little or no snowpack across much of the nation’s lower 48 states, this year could be very active one for wildfires and brushfires, including parts of the Northeast where such events are relatively uncommon,” said Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute in New York.

In 2011, wildfires scorched more than 8 million acres across the United States, damaging thousands of homes, businesses and vehicles and causing $855 million in insured losses, according to the I.I.I.

The Institute offers resources online that explain what types of losses are generally covered under a standard homeowners or business property insurance policy.

The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety in Tampa, Fla., also noted this week that dry and windy conditions are triggering wildfire in the Northeast region. The group offers wildfire resources online for homeowners, including how to create defensible space zones to keep wildfires from spreading.

Also, the American Red Cross offers online a wildfire safety checklist, including a list of essential supplies to prepare in case of evacuation.

“More and more people are making their homes in woodland settings, rural areas or remote mountain sites. There, residents enjoy the beauty of the environment but face the very real danger of wildfires,” according to the American Red Cross. “Wildfires often begin unnoticed. They spread quickly, igniting brush, trees and homes. In a wildfire, every second counts.”

 

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