Danny heads up D&O, E&O and Cyber in the US for Trans Re, one of the market leaders in each line. In this episode we run through all the big issues in D&O: -Silicon Valley Bank and bank runs and how Directors and Officers liability underwriters are incorporating lessons Dana Hojnowski’s favorite claim. (0:00) What’s wrong with securities fraud allegation? (2:42) How do you know when a company is violating their duty of care to their shareholders? (5:14) What are the lesson...

Amy Finkelstein is Professor of Economics at MIT. Amy’s research focuses on market failures and government intervention in insurance markets and she has won numerous awards include a MacArthur Fellowship and the John Bates Clark Medal. Amy is co-author with Liran Einav and Ray Fisman of the forthcoming book: “Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to do about it”. Buy the book https://www.amazon.com/Risky-Business-Insurance-Markets-About/dp/0300253435/ Amy on wikipedia htt...

Nobody knew how to price volatility until now. I bet you're surprised! This isn't hyperbole, Steve Mildenhall and John Major have a deep and thorough understanding of all the relevant literatures and have been part of a loosely collaborative team of academics and actuaries working out the details of a coherent, actionable theoretical foundation for pricing insurance for their entire careers. Now that they're both retired they've delivered us the tome the actuarial profession needs.&nbs...

Mark Friedlander returns to talk through the changes to Florida's insurance laws. It's just about the most comprehensive reform anyone could imagine, even if all it does is put Florida residents on a similar footing to many other states! Assignment of Benefits Removal won’t be enforced until January 1, 2023. 3:35 What’s the risk of a political backlash from insurance companies? 8:52 The problem with the May special session was the senate was willing to take the similar steps that were just p...

Do you think Florida is weird? Most everyone does. Why? Gary is the man to answer this question. Gary is Professor Emeritus of the University of South Florida and has dedicated his career to studying the social history of Florida. Here is Gary on wikipedia Here is Gary on Amazon Quote of the show: "Do crazy people immigrate to Florida or do perfectly normal people come here, and then be a little goofy and go crazy." What is the most unusual social characteristic of Florida? 0...

Dave DeMott is President-Elect of The Florida Surplus Lines Association, Chair of the Legislative committee and sits on the national Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association committee. Most importantly for today, Dave DeMott is a real, legit, on-the-ground insurance practitioner in Florida. He gets into the real details and war stories about insurance claims in Florida. Dave’s introduction to the Florida insurance market. 0:00 What is a lodestar fee multiplier? 5:23 The problem ...

I worry about whether we can improve the insurance system. I once wrote an essay arguing that all insurance is compelled, so the only way to get someone to buy insurance is to force them to do it. The implication is that nobody will ever do anything good without being forced. We learn some lessons the hard way but then quickly forget. What's more we hate this compulsion! We chafe at the rules and many of us shirk them when we can. It's a mess. Joe Edelman has a better vision. In his vi...

Mark Friendlander is Director of Corporate Communications at the Insurance Information Institute a think tank focusing on insurance education. In this episode we dig into a bunch of detail of the ways in which the insurance ecosystem in Florida is doing Floridians harm and why the world is like that. What are the root causes of the fraud in Florida? What are the outcome? What happens if nothing changes? What are some special powers you have as an insured in Florida and how are they ulti...

Joe Petrelli founded Demotech, the rating agency that dominates the solvency assessment market for Florida's homeowners insurance market. This year (2022) he has found himself the bearer of bad news: that many of Florida's domestic insurance companies have not met Demotech's standards. At least six insurance companies went insolvent this year with others being downgraded, which meant that many thousands of Florida residents have to scramble to get their insurance replaced. I should not...

Brian Nosek, has been at the center of the two most important recent social revolutions in academia. First is implicit bias where Brian co-founded Project Implicit http://projectimplicit.net/ based on a pretty incredible idea: that we don't do what we say we value. The concept of implict bias has really taken off and the practice of implicit bias detection and training has gone "way out in front of the research" as we discuss. While he was busy kicking off a fundamental change in our society ...

This conversation gave me such a feeling of humility yet hope about our world. It's an awful place sometimes but some people are truly awesome at making it better. Jen Brady is the Executive Director of Oasis, a non-profit serving women and children in Paterson, NJ and this is her second appearance on the show. In the first show we talked about COVID and the poor. This time we're digging right onto Oasis and its mission and how it's doing. Charity is incredibly similar to insurance. As I ...

Chris Blattman is an economist and political scientist and author of several books, most recently *Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace*. This is another installment in my investigation for how to pursue social change. What I notice about insurance is that the institution is so deeply encoded in our society that we don't even realize how important it is. So deeply encoded that we actually kind of hate it, yet it persists because of how important it is. Wh...

Tyler Cowen is an economist, author, podcaster, venture and philanthropic sponsor. Tyler is one of my intellectual heroes, this is his third appearance on this program and we'll be anchoring this discussion around his new book *Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World* co-authored with Daniel Gross. Tyler blogs at marginalrevolution.com (I've been reading it every day for about 15 years) and hosts the only must-listen podcast in my player: Conversatio...

Howard Kunreuther is the foremost authority on applying behavioral economics to unlikely, high consequence events. I remain astounded that Howard's teachings are not part of the educational canon for all insurance professionals. This is important stuff! In this episode we discuss: * Cognitive bias and how it impacts society generally and insurance in particular * How we might overcome cognitive bias in our decision making * Prioritization of risk * How politics really is the mediating force f...

Social science is brutally hard to do well. I once got a guest to admit there has been no progress on it ever and another one to say that moral progress is literally impossible. I think there's a deeper link to morality and social science than most so this is depressing stuff for me. This episode was part of an effort of mine to get back to first principles. But, uh.. what ARE the first principles of social science? Enter Robin! Robin Hanson is Associate professor of Economics at George Maso...

Stan McChrystal retired as a 4 Star General in the US Army and has since founded the McChrystal Group, written four books and launched a podcast. Stan is one of the world's foremost scholars and practitioners of leadership and in this conversation we focus on his latest book, Risk: A User's Guide. As I say in the interview, I think this is Stan's most straightforward how-to guide on leadership and we dig very deeply into the nuanced and fascinating connection between leadership and uncertaint...

GA Bartick teaches people how to sell an underappreciated skill with very general applications. GA wrote a book called Silver Bullet Selling and in this conversation we talk about - how small organizations should scale their founders - Has sales changed over time - What is different about your industry? - How to make an emotional connection - How insurance is different! - Big ticket vs small ticket sales - Sales books are exemplary training manuals. How to teach, how to train? - Is sales trai...

Scott Sumner is the Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and blogger at themoneyillusion.com and econlog and author of two books: The Midas Paradox and more recently, The Money Illusion. Scott came to prominence because his work on the Great Depression (published in Midas Paradox) gave him analytical superpowers for understanding the Great Recession in real time in 2008 and 2009 and beyond and in retrospect. We've seen the monetary ...

David Zuby is executive vice president and chief research officer for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and also a worldwide expert on crash test dummies! I found myself in an amazingly interesting conversation with David out in the field and pulled out my smartphone to capture it! In this quick chat we discuss: * the production economy of crash test dummies * what the challenges are in designing them * what are the limitations? * how long do they last? * Do you remember Vince and La...

Craig is Head of ESG for Trans Re, a global reinsurance company and in this episode we dig into what ESG is about generally and what role reinsurers and the insurance industry plays today. In the episode we cover: * Is Trans doing this for the good of society or just to raise rates? * Is it just about catastrophe business? * Does it just mean you'll make more money on non-ESG-consistent risks? * What does a company that embodies the antithesis of ESG values look like? * Is this just a marketi...