Leaders of the casualty insurance practices of a global insurance carrier and a North American specialty brokerage offered insights for insurance buyers and sellers to deal with today’s casualty insurance market during a webinar last week.
Their main message was exactly that: “You have to operate in today’s world.”
Bill Chepulis, head of Large Casualty for U.S. National Accounts at Zurich North America, used that exact phrase when offering an analysis of what’s fueling continued loss severity—and rate increases—in casualty and transportation lines, which are expected to continue.
The No. 1 driver is the broken legal environment, he said.
“I can’t solve that today. And even if I could, by the time it works its way through, the impact is a couple of years down the road, at least,” Chepulis said. “You have to operate in today’s world,” he said, during a webinar hosted by Zywave titled “Casualty Craziness: What’s the Cause and What’s the Cure?”
For customers, one way of operating in today’s world is putting in work to become better risks, he said, suggesting that insureds need to pay as much attention to liability risk management as they have been devoting to workers compensation risk in recent years.
“I see it and feel it when I’m sitting down with the customer. There’s a lot of great material—they’re v