Jennifer Choe Named Director, A&H Actuarial

We are pleased to announce that Jennifer Choe, ASA, MAAA has been named Director, A&H Actuarial. After being with Perr&Knight since 2014, most recently in the role of Senior Consulting Actuary, Jennifer has been instrumental in significantly developing and growing our A&H practice.

Jennifer’s extensive experience spans a wide variety of insurance products, in both the individual and group health insurance markets. Her experience spans all states and includes assistance with product development, rate development, experience review, competitive studies, rate filings for new products, rate revisions for existing products and testifying in rate hearings. Jennifer also has expertise performing pricing and reserving work, stop-loss analyses and has worked on a variety of funding and feasibility analyses related to captive insurance. Please join us in congratulating Jennifer on her new role!

If you have A&H challenges, reach out to us today and learn how Jennifer and her talented team can help!

Perr&Knight’s Arkansas State Legislature Work Continues with RFP: A Call to Action for Brokerage Firms and Captive Insurance Companies

Kyle M. Hales, and the Risk Strategies & Solutions team’s ongoing work with the Arkansas State Legislature has advanced!  They are now leading the state’s search for vendors to provide management services for a captive insurance company they are considering forming, as well as brokerage services for design and placement of a commercial property reinsurance tower to sit above the captive. 

Calling All Captives Managers and Brokerage Firms! The RFPs can be accessed HERE under Bid Opportunities on the Procurement section of the AR Department of Transformation and Shared Services website.

Also, continuing their coverage of this topic, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a new article providing more detail on the RFP and Perr&Knight’s leadership of the initiative.  Quoted in the article, Kyle Hales provides some perspective: “”We will be doing the initial vetting,” he told the Executive Subcommittee on Thursday.  “Our thought is that we would get vendors to respond to each of these, and our goal is to try to narrow this down to maybe two or three that the Executive Subcommittee could evaluate and essentially decide to move forward with.” 

To read the complete article, please click HERE. (Note: subscription required)

Perr&Knight In the News: Hales & Lenz Featured in Arkansas Press Democrat

Recently, Perr&Knight’s Kyle Hales and Charles Lenz appeared before the Arkansas State Legislature’s Executive Subcommittee, presenting their commissioned report and recommendations to help alleviate costs from rising insurance premiums incurred by the State’s public schools and colleges.

Highlights from the report and some additional comments made during the presentation by Kyle Hales were outlined in a featured article in the Arkansas Press-Democrat. With the report suggesting the formation of a captive entity to better serve the state, Hales explained: “It’s a true net savings. While the commercial insurance marketplace functions as a reasonably effective means to transfer insurance-related risk, it is by no means a perfectly efficient model. Commercial insurance carrier expenses such as commissions, marketing, advertising, premium taxes and overhead expenses are incorporated into the final premiums paid by policyholders.”

To read the complete article summarizing the hearing, please click HERE.

PERR&KNIGHT Earns 2024 Great Place to Work Certification™

Santa Monica, California — For the fourth straight year, PERR&KNIGHT is proud to be Certified™ by Great Place to Work®. The prestigious award is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at PERR&KNIGHT. This year, 86% of our employees said it’s a great place to work – as compared to 57% for the average U.S. company.

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience, and the leadership behaviors proven to deliver market-leading revenue, employee retention and increased innovation.

“Great Place to Work Certification is a highly coveted achievement that requires consistent and intentional dedication to the overall employee experience,” said Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice president of global recognition at Great Place to Work. “By successfully earning this recognition, it is evident that PERR&KNIGHT stands out as one of the top companies to work for, providing a great workplace environment for its employees.”

“We are very excited to achieve Great Place to Work-Certified™ status for the fourth year in a row, as we put a great deal of effort into optimizing the employee experience at PERR&KNIGHT,” said Tim Perr, Managing Principal and CEO. “We are dedicated to continuously enhancing and improving the work environment and culture for our employees, and we celebrate and thank them for all they do to earn this recognition.”

“We are very focused on making PERR&KNIGHT a great place to work,” said Scott Knight, Managing Principal and Chief Sales Officer.  “For years, we have been successful at doing this through two formal committees dedicated to enriching our employees’ experience, seeking the feedback of our employees and being responsive to the evolution of the workplace.”

According to Great Place to Work research, job seekers are 4.5 times more likely to find a great boss at a Certified great workplace. Additionally, employees at Certified workplaces are 93% more likely to look forward to coming to work, and are twice as likely to be paid fairly, earn a fair share of the company’s profits and have a fair chance at promotion.

WE’RE HIRING!

Looking to grow your career at a company that puts its people first? Visit our careers page at: https://www.perrknight.com/about/careers-3/.

 About PERR&KNIGHT

Founded in 1994, Perr&Knight provides insurance consulting and software solutions to the property & casualty and life, accident & health industries. Services include actuarial consulting, product development, insurance policy and forms consulting, regulatory compliance, compliance and operational assessments/training, state filings, licensing, technology consulting, statistical reporting, data services, predictive analytics, and bureau monitoring & maintenance. Software includes StateFilings.com, the leading cloud-based state filings management solution. With offices in Santa Monica, Boca Raton, Cincinnati, and the New York metropolitan area, and with more than 150 insurance professionals including 30+ credentialed actuaries, Perr&Knight is among the largest independent actuarial and insurance consulting firms in the United States.

About Great Place to Work Certification™

Great Place to Work® Certification™ is the most definitive “employer-of-choice” recognition that companies aspire to achieve. It is the only recognition based entirely on what employees report about their workplace experience – specifically, how consistently they experience a high-trust workplace. Great Place to Work Certification is recognized worldwide by employees and employers alike and is the global benchmark for identifying and recognizing outstanding employee experience. Every year, more than 10,000 companies across 60 countries apply to get Great Place to Work-Certified.

About Great Place to Work®

Great Place to Work® is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, they have surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Their employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Everything they do is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work For All™.

California Requires PPA Filings by July 1, 2023 Due to Minimum Financial Responsibility Limits Change

On January 30, 2023, the California Department of Insurance (“CDI”) issued BULLETIN 2023-1 to remind all private passenger automobile liability insurers of their current obligation to file Prior Approval Rate Applications (“Rate Application”) with the CDI’s Rate Regulation Branch by July 1, 2023 to account for the updates to the financial responsibility laws going into effect on or after January 1, 2025 pursuant to Senate Bill 1107 (Dodd, Chapter 717, Statutes of 2022).

Below we have summarized the key information.

REQUIRED CHANGES

  • Increase minimum coverage liability limits to $30,000 for bodily injury to or death of one person in any one accident.
  • Increase minimum coverage liability limits to $60,000 for bodily injury to or death of two or more persons in any one accident.
  • Increase minimum coverage liability limits to $15,000 for property damage caused by any one accident.

DETAILS FOR RATE APPLICATION FILINGS

  • This Rate Application shall be filed with the sole purpose of introducing the new limit options (“FR limits”) for Bodily Injury, Property Damage, and Uninsured Motorist/Underinsured Motorist to comply with the foregoing changes to the financial responsibility laws.
  • Submit the Rate Application as filing type “Rule filing without rate impact,” and program name “FR Limits 2023.”  There shall be no changes to rating relativities to existing limit options or any other rating elements in the insurer’s rating plan in this rule filing.
  • Provide support for the rating relativities for the newly introduced FR limits in Rate Application Exhibit 19-A, Supplemental Information.
  • For insurers that currently offer the new FR limits, submit the Rule filing without rate impact as delineated above, excluding support for relativities. The insurer must attest to the existence of these limit offerings in the Filing Memorandum and identify where those limits can be found in the insurer’s rate and rule manual included in the filing.

NEED HELP WITH YOUR CALIFORNIA FILINGS

Perr&Knight is a leading provider of actuarial and state filing services to insurers in California. Our actuarial consulting team actively follows the California market and is very familiar with all the filing requirements in the state. We prepare and submit more California filings than any other company.

Please contact us for any insurance filings support that is needed with your California insurance products.

California Requires Property Rate Filings for Wildfire Safety Regulations

In October of this year, California approved a regulation requiring rate filings from every personal and commercial property insurer that uses wildfire risk, explicitly or implicitly, in rating a policyholder or applicant. The California Department of Insurance (“CDI”) recently published FAQs to assist companies in complying with the regulations.

Below we have summarized the key information from the FAQs.

REQUIRED RATE FILINGS

Property insurers are required to submit a rate application by April 12, 2023. The rate application needs to include a complete rate filing that complies with the CDI’s Prior Approval Rating Filing Instructions. If a property insurer has an existing pending rate application, it may be amended to meet the requirements of the regulation. However, the CDI is not requiring this and a second rate application can be submitted with the wildfire mitigation credits, which will result in the property insurer having two pending rate applications at the same time. The CDI anticipates reviewing each rate application in the order that it is received, but it is possible the second rate application could be approved first.

For property insurers that do not use wildfire risk in the rating, no rate filing is required. However, to the extent a property insurer uses territorial rating, this may implicitly include wildfire rating and require a rate filing under the regulation.

LINES OF INSURANCE

The FAQs state the following, “The regulation applies to any line of insurance, personal or commercial, where the insurance company in rating the building being evaluated applies or uses a rate that is developed with, determined by or relies upon, in whole or in part, a rating plan that segments, creates a rate differential, or surcharges the premium based upon a policyholder or applicant’s wildfire risk.” Prior to the FAQs, the CDI indicated via communications with our actuarial consultants that renters (HO4) and condo (HO6) policies were subject to the regulations if there is a rate differential that is caused at least in part by the risk of wildfire.

MANDATORY AND OPTIONAL MITIGATION FACTORS

For each mandatory mitigation factor, property insurers are required to have separate, individual discounts or credits. The same applies to optional factors. Mitigation factors can be combined in the rating provided that the discount or credit is more than the sum of the individual discounts or credit.

Property insurers may need to update their underwriting guidelines depending on whether the new regulations result in a change in their underwriting process. Some of the mitigation factors require verification, which could be obtained through an inspection or through an insurer’s questionnaire or application if an insurer does not perform an inspection. The same applies to renewals.

WILDFIRE RISK MODELS USED BY INSURERS

The CDI will review any wildfire risk model used in the rating. When a property insurer is adopting a new model not previously reviewed by the CDI, the time to approval for the rate filing will likely be longer than a typical rate filing. If a model is being adopted in a filing, the CDI’s Model Checklist should be included in the filing and the Model Disclosure in the CDI’s Prior Approval Rate Application should be completed.

NEED HELP WITH A CALIFORNIA RATE FILING

Perr&Knight is a leading provider of actuarial and state filing services to insurers in California. Our actuarial consulting team actively follows the California market and is very familiar with all the filing requirements in the state. We prepare and submit more California filings than any other company.

Please contact us for any insurance filings support that is needed with your California insurance products.

California Approves First Increase for Auto Insurance in 19 Months

On December 7, the California Department of Insurance (“CDI”) approved a 14.4% overall rate increase for Allmerica Financial Benefit Insurance Company’s Commercial Auto program. The company, which is part of The Hanover Insurance Group, submitted the filing on August 8, 2020.
Prior to this approval, the last California rate increase for personal or commercial auto was approved in April 2020. There are more than 40 rate increase filings currently pending approval for these lines. Given the backlog of filings at the CDI and the severity trends being experienced for auto claims, companies should work to file any increases needed sooner rather than later. Otherwise, they can expect to see an even longer line of filings in front of them.
Perr&Knight submits more filings in California than any other consulting firm. Our actuaries and state filing experts are available to assist you with navigating the CDI filing process.
Contact us today to learn more.

Auto Insurers in New Mexico – Immediate Filings Required to Address Uninsured Motorist Coverage

On November 9, 2021 the New Mexico Superintendent of Insurance, Russell Toal, issued Bulletin 2021-024. The Bulletin was issued in accordance with Crutcher v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., NMSC Docket No. S-1-SC-37478.  The case summary focused on adequate explanation to the policyholder regarding minimum limits for UM/UIM. Only if an insurer provides the proper explanation (Disclosure / Exclusion) may they charge a premium for minimum underinsurance coverage.
This bulletin requires all automobile insurers covering risks located in New Mexico to adopt, on an immediate basis, a UM/UIM Disclosure and a UIM Exclusion for use in every current and future automobile policy. If an insurer provides adequate disclosure, it may lawfully charge a premium for such coverage (e.g., minimum UM/UIM limits).  The requirements vary slightly based on language used:
Unaltered OSI Language – Using the exact Disclosure and Exclusion language provided by the New Mexico Office of Superintendent of Insurance (“OSI”).

  • Develop and distribute the new Disclosure and Exclusion to all existing policyholder as soon as practicable, but not later than December 9, 2021.
  • File the new Disclosure and Exclusion in SERFF as “use and file” no later than February 7, 2022.

Altered OSI or Proprietary Language – Modifying any of the OSI Disclosure and Exclusion language or drafting complete proprietary language.

  • Develop and file the new Disclosure and Exclusion in SERFF in accordance with the normal form review process set forth in NMSA 1978, § 59A-18-12 and OSI rules, and the normal sixty (60) day statutory review period shall apply.
  • Distribute the new Disclosure and Exclusion to all existing policyholders as soon as practicable, but not later than thirty (30) days, after the OSI approves the language or after the end of the sixty (60) day statutory period, whichever occurs first.

Contact Us Today
Whether you need help drafting the Disclosure and Exclusion, revising your rules or submitting required filings, the experts at Perr&Knight can provide immediate and efficient assistance.
Contact Perr&Knight

Nevada Prohibits Adverse Action Resulting from COVID-19, Will Require Refunds for Affected Policyholders

Citizens of Nevada may be seeing a refund come their way this year after the Division of Insurance (DOI) approved regulation R087-20 on December 28, 2020. This measure prohibits personal lines property and casualty insurers from taking adverse action when re-scoring policyholders at renewal and requires that a refund be made for any increase in premium as a result.
Retroactively effective March 1, 2020, an insurer may not increase premium based on information contained in a consumer file, including information that determines an insurance score. The prohibition continues until a date two years after the termination date of the Declaration of Emergency for COVID-19 issued by the Governor on March 12, 2020. The regulation does, however, allow for favorable re-scoring if the information results in a lower premium.
These measures are similar to bulletins issued in other states directing insurers to exempt extraordinary life events related to the COVID-19 pandemic from credit-based insurance scoring. However, all companies writing personal lines property and casualty business in Nevada are required to notify the DOI via email, by February 1, 2021, as to how consumer information is used. If a company does regularly re-score their book of business, the insurer must commit to identifying all policyholders whose premiums were increased on or after March 1, 2020, and issue a refund for the increase. A rule filing is required to be submitted to the DOI by March 3, 2021 to supersede any previous rules that allowed adverse action. Insurers are encouraged to start issuing refunds as soon as the affected policyholders are identified.
To ensure your compliance, we at Perr & Knight are here to assist you in submitting your rule filing to the Nevada Division of Insurance. Please contact us today.
Reference:
Copy of approved regulation – Nevada Regulation No. R087-20
Guidance and FAQs – FAQ on Regulation R087-20

2019 TRIA Reauthorization – Are You Compliant?

On December 20, 2019 President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2019. The NAIC Terrorism Insurance Implementation Working Group recently issued bulletins related to this matter.  his Reauthorization Act of 2019 changes the Terrorism risk Insurance Program as follows:

  • Extends the Federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Program through December 31, 2027.
  • Adjusts the mandatory recoupment timing.
  • Fixes the United States Government reimbursement level of covered terrorism losses above the deductible at 80%.

Will Your Rules, Forms and Policyholder Notices be Compliant?
Affected Commercial lines of business may require updates that must be in place prior to the end of 2020 including the following:

  • TRIA endorsements and disclosure notices must be revised to properly reflect the federal share percentage of 80% and may need to be filed in some states.
  • Various rates and rules need to be reviewed to ensure they are compatible with the revised program terms. If revisions are needed, they may need to be filed.

Whether you need help drafting updated endorsements and notices, revising your rules or submitting required filings, the experts at Perr&Knight can help you prepare to be compliant with required changes. Contact Us Today.