What About Industry and Geography?

Jeff Cohen, a Zywave senior vice president, asked the speakers during a webinar hosted by Zywave titled “Casualty Craziness: What’s the Cause and What’s the Cure?,” to discuss whether some industry-geography combinations were more palatable for casualty underwriters.

Mike Vitulli, National Casualty Practice leader at Risk Strategies, said there is “relatively good competition” for large accounts with high deductibles. “The market is actively looking to write those. If you’ve got a good risk that’s got maybe a small auto fleet, you have a lot of potential competition,” also, he said. “It’s the other stuff—where there are wheels or claims or habitational real estate, something with some hair on it, then the market pulls back.” The hard risks are only getting harder to place, he said.

Jim Blinn, vice president of Client Solutions at Zywave, offered a slide showing judicial hellholes based on the latest report from the American Tort Reform Association, which now includes states like Georgia and Louisiana in addition to well-known centers of civil liability like New York City and Cook County, Illinois.

In terms of industry, Blinn’s loss data showed that manufacturing companies, oil and gas extraction, and companies involved in the management of other enterprises ranked as the three with the highest average losses (among defendants with claims of $1 million or more). On the lower end of the scale were transportation and warehousing, construction and real estate, rental and leasing.

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