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A hurricane barreling up the East Coast has the potential to cause the worst damages to the region in more than 50 years — and insurers will likely feel the brunt of it.

Shares of Travelers , Allstate and Chubb all slipped more than 3% on Thursday when meteorologists ramped up their warnings that Hurricane Irene could pummel the Northeast on Sunday.

The prospect for damage is frightening for an industry of property and casualty insurers that has already faced abnormally high catastrophe losses this year just from natural disasters.

The forecasts are grim, and if the beast hits as hard as some predict she could cause billions of dollars in damages. Read more…

WINDSOR, Conn. and ARLINGTON, Va., July 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — It has long been said that life insurance is a product that is sold, not bought. Yet a new study finds that Americans’ preferences for purchasing life insurance are shifting towards direct buying methods. While two thirds of consumers (64 percent) still prefer to buy life insurance from an insurance or financial professional, that number is down from 1996, when 8 in 10 (80 percent) preferred to buy the product face-to-face. Today, more than one in four adults (26 percent) prefer to purchase life insurance direct via the Internet, mail or over the phone.

“‘Obviously, the Internet has fundamentally changed consumers’ buying practices over the past 15 years,” said Marvin H. Read more…

Pension Annuities What are pension annuities?

Pension annuities (termed simply “annuities” in financial circles) are products created by life insurance companies to create a pension for individuals’ or couples’ retirements.

What’s common among annuity pensions? When the pension begins

Annuities are divided into two categories: immediate and deferred.  Immediate annuities begin paying out immediately (actually, it usually takes between a month and a year before your immediate annuity’s pension begins).  Deferred annuities have two phases: an accumulation phase and an income phase.  The income phase begins whenever you decide that you’re finished paying into the annuity.  This can be before or after retirement.

The frequency of pension payments

Typically, an annuity pays its pension monthly.

The size of pension payments

Your annuity’s pension will issue payments of equal amounts (so you’d better plan ahead for what inflation will do to your currency).  The size of your payments depends on two things: how much money you have amassed in your annuity (through premium payments and compound interest) and your life expectancy.

Regarding life expectancy, remember that the companies that create annuities are the same companies that create life insurance policies.  Largely, the factors that determine life insurance rates will determine the size of annuity pensions.

Annuity premiums

During your annuity’s accumulation phase (if yours is a deferred annuity), you’ll pay periodic premiums, just as though you were paying for life insurance (think of annuities as a sort of insurance that protects against living too long).  Typically, your premiums will be of a fixed amount, but you may have the liberty to pay more than the minimum required premium so as to amass greater equity, which equates to a larger pension later on.

What’s different among pension annuities? Duration of pension

Typically, annuity pensions last until the death of the annuitant.  However, there are other options.  An annuity can be bound to the lives of two spouses; it can pay a pension for only a certain period; or it can offer mixed guarantees concerning duration and amount.  (see al

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You’re driving down the highway, the cruise control set to 70. You come up behind a slow-moving car. There’s no room to pass, yet no need to hit the brakes. The car slows automatically.

When the outside lane is clear, you flip on your blinker, pull out, and let the car speed itself back up to 70. Your foot has not touched a pedal.

That’s the promise of the smart system known as adaptive cruise control, which uses radar to sense where traffic is, then automatically decelerates or even brakes to keep your car at a safe distance. Radar is used in other systems to warn drivers to brake hard to avoid collisions, and to make sure they know there’s a car in the blind spot.

Car radar is not new. It has Read more…

NEW YORK—Noting evidence of a “potential market shift” in some areas of property insurance, a midyear market update from Marsh Inc. says the overall U.S. insurance market has remained stable in the first half of this year.

The New York-based brokerage noted that the impact of catastrophe losses during the first six months of the year have been felt mainly by property insurers, “which appear to be transitioning from the soft market cycle of the past several years.”

Still, the report released Tuesday noted, “even among property insurers, competition and capacity remain high, meaning that insurers with little or no cat exposure have been able to achieve rate reductions, although smaller than had been typical over the past few years.”

In addition, “challenges are beginning to be felt for some insureds in parts of other lines of business, including primary casualty and workers compensation,” according to the analysis.

Increased underwriting discipline

Marsh noted that insurers are applying increased underwriting discipline in all lines of business and are trying to hold or increase rates. In the property m Read more…