Kibble & Prentice Insider

Take Advantage of Soft Insurance Market to Reduce Property & Casualty Premiums

Since mid-2004, U.S. property & casualty insurance rates have been careening down from their 2004 peak. This extended soft market has created tremendous opportunities for insurance buyers to reduce premium costs and free up funds to invest in operations or capital improvements, or return to investors.

The insurance market remains soft and savings, along with coverage enhancements are there to be seized.  Now is a great time to rethink your approach. Full Article

Is Your Board Properly Managing Risk?

First comes the fall; then comes the fallout. With accusations that boards of directors of financial institutions were asleep at the wheel while their companies engaged in increasingly risky behavior that erased millions of shareholder value and plunged the country into recession, increasing pressure is being placed on public company boards to shoulder the burden of risk oversight for the companies they serve. Full Article

A Potential Medical Malpractice Storm on the Horizon

A few years ago, it was thought that the volatility of healthcare professional liability may have calmed after 29 years.  This hypothesis was promoted, given the influences of better patient safety, transparency of quality measurements and reporting, reduced trial attorney appetite for medical malpractice in the face of stiffened carrier claims handling, as well as lower claims frequency and carriers floating in cash and capacity.  Today, many of those variables remain; however, they may be diluted and we remain lulled into a present 'calm before the storm.'  This "storm" is the vortex of changes occasioned by federal health care reform. Full Article

Risk Strategies for the Food & Beverage Industry

Buyers of insurance should be aware of numerous costly uninsured and underinsured risks within the details of many property and casualty insurance policies sold to the food and beverage industry.  This article points out a few such risks and mentions strategies to reduce potential financial loss to help protect your balance sheet and maintain good working relationships with your customers. Full Article

What Employees Should Know About Health Care Reform

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 together create the most comprehensive health insurance reform undertaken in recent history.

Beginning this year, you will see significant changes in health plan coverage, with many additional changes phased in over the course of the next eight years. This summary is intended to help you understand some of the key changes that may impact you and your family. Full Summary

Expanded Tax Treatment of Health Care Benefits Provided to Children under Age 26

As previously communicated, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, the Act) requires group health plans that offer dependent children coverage to provide such coverage to children up to age 26. The Departments of Labor, the Treasury and Health & Human Services (the Departments) issued joint interim regulations on this new requirement, providing much needed clarification. The Departments are requesting comments on this interim rule by Aug. 11, 2010. Full Summary

Early Retiree Reinsurance Program

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an interim final rule on May 5, 2010, setting forth the initial parameters of the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP or "Program"). The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program was established by Congress with the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Congress funded the program with $5 billion and intended that the program continue until December 31, 2013, or until funding runs out.

The Program, which begins June 1, 2010, provides reimbursement to participating sponsors for a portion of the cost of maintaining this health coverage for early retirees, and its purpose is to encourage employers to continue maintaining early retiree health coverage prior to the establishment of the exchanges in 2014. The Program is designed to work with the Retiree Drug Subsidy (RDS) program and HHS does expect that many of the employers in that program will also enroll in the ERRP. Full Summary