Insurance Super Bowl LVIII Advertising With More Rate Increases in Play  February 8th 2024

Allstate reveals full-year loss

The Allstate Corporation, which suffered a $1.4 billion net loss in 2022, remained in the red in 2023.

According to Allstate’s latest earnings report, here’s how the company fared in the quarter and year ended December 31. See Chart including 2023 loss of $316 million.

Focusing on the quarterly result, Allstate chair, president, and chief executive Tom Wilson said in a release: “Allstate had strong profitability in the quarter with net income of $1.5 billion due to improved auto profitability and mild weather.

US P&C carriers to seek further rate increases – report

A Moody’s Investors Service report says further rate increases are to be expected from homeowners’ insurers in the US following losses from severe convective storms.

In a sector comment, Moody’s Investors Service financial institutions associate managing director Sarah Hibler noted: “US P&C (property and casualty) companies suffered large losses in 2023 not from major catastrophes, but primarily from a series of severe convective storms.

“These storms, which include hail, straight-line wind, and tornado, are non-peak (or secondary) perils, which means they are more frequent but individually less costly than primary perils such as hurricanes.

“In recent years, growing insured exposures, higher property reconstruction costs, increased litigation, and changes in claims settlement practices have contributed to higher weather-related losses for P&C insurers.”

It was pointed out that the average annual losses in the US from severe convective storms are higher than the average annual losses from hurricanes. Additionally, from a meteorological forecasting standpoint, convective storms are difficult to predict.

“In response to growing non-peak perils, insurers are incorporating more recent experience into their modeling and pricing,” Hibler said. “Many homeowners’ insurers have continued to increase their catastrophe budgets…

California weather: Los Angeles hit by 475 mudslides as atmospheric river storm brings more rain

In Los Angeles, between six and 12 inches of rain fell, making it the third wettest two-day stretch since records began in the 1870s.

Officials are warning of further mudslides and flooding after a large amount of the city's average annual rainfall fell in just three days - while seven deaths have been reported across the state.

LA mayor Karen Bass said: "Our hillsides are already saturated. So even not very heavy rains could still lead to additional mudslides.

"Even when the rain stops, the ground may continue to shift."

Three were killed yesterday in the extreme conditions - and nearly 400 trees have fallen in the city. Another died today in a swollen Tijuana River channel near the border with Mexico.

LA fire chief Kristin Crowley said at least three dozen buildings required inspection because of mudslide damage and hillside slope failures - and seven had been marked unsafe.

Category 6? As Warming Stokes Storms, Some Want a Bigger Hurricane Category

A handful of super powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has a couple of experts proposing a new category of whopper hurricanes: Category 6.

Studies have shown that the strongest tropical storms are getting more intense because of climate change. So the traditional five-category Saffir-Simpson scale, developed more than 50 years ago, may not show the true power of the most muscular storms, two climate scientists suggest in a Monday study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They propose a sixth category for storms with winds that exceed 192 miles per hour (309 kilometers per hour).

Ransomware Hackers Stole More Than $1 Billion in 2023

Ransomware gangs stole more than $1 billion in 2023, the largest amount ever recorded, according to a report published Wednesday by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis Inc.

With ransomware hacks, cybercriminals block access to a victims’ data or files until they pay an extortion fee, typically through cryptocurrency. In 2023, hackers nearly doubled the funds stolen in 2022 and exceeded previous records made in a ransomware boom during the pandemic, according to the report.Chainalysis said ransomware hackers made off with $567 million in 2022.

The commercialization of ransomware – a phenomenon in which advanced hackers sell malware to others and take a cut of the proceeds – has made it easier to conduct such breaches. The professionalization of the crime led to an increase in the number of threat actors in 2023, said Jackie Burns Koven, head of cyber threat intelligence at Chainalysis.

Ransomware gangs are increasingly turning to a “big game hunting” strategy, which means they conduct fewer attacks throughout the year but collect bigger payments each time, sometimes extorting $1 million within a single attack, the report noted.

In one extreme example, ransomware gang Cl0p racked up over $100 million in ransom paymentsby targeting the popular file transfer application MOVEIt, used by over thousands of organizations globally, according to Chainalysis. Some high-profile victims of the hack included oil and gas company Shell, US federal government agencies and British Airways.