What's New—May 2008

Five reference manual updates and new issues of The Risk Report, Captive Insurance Company Reports (CICR), and the spring issue of Employment Practices Liability Consultant (EPLiC) have been added to the IRMI infobases. We have also updated the home page and job function dashboards to facilitate navigation in the site.

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Newsletters & Journals

The May issue of The Risk Report, by Kate Westover, summarizes the TRIP analysis of captive domicile selection: taxes, regulation, infrastructure, and perception. This analysis helps both prospective and existing captive owners determine which type of domicile is most appropriate for their specific needs.

The May issue of Captive Insurance Company Reports begins with the recent IRS guidance on Federal Excise Taxes applying on a cascading basis to insurance and reinsurance policies. Articles on recent captive growth (including the top 10 captive managers) and the Luxembourg Rendezvous are also included.

The spring issue of Employment Practices Liability Consultant (EPLiC) includes the following articles.

Reference Manuals

Canadian Coverage Caselaw features 17 cases from four Canadian provinces, as well as the Supreme Court of Canada. The Canadian Coverage Caselaw Bulletin provides brief descriptive information and links to the case discussions.

Commercial Liability Insurance updates the discussion of terrorism coverage as made available under the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). The federal reimbursement program under which insurers are required to make terrorism coverage available was reauthorized last year, with some changes. In response to these changes, ISO filed new terrorism endorsements for the CGL policy. The evolution of the federal terrorism insurance program is discussed in section IV.L. The new or revised CGL terrorism endorsements are annotated in section VI.I, beginning with endorsement CG 21 70. Also included in this supplement are some recent court decisions addressing the question of defective construction as an "occurrence" (section V.L). The supplement also adds a new discussion to section XI.K regarding the application of umbrella anti-insolvency provisions in long tail claims where there is more than one insolvent primary policy. In addition, section XI.I has been improved with a discussion of the “rules of thumb” many insurance professionals use for selecting excess coverage limits for businesses with revenues of varying sizes.

Contractual Risk Transfer expands the discussion of additional insured status under the CGL policy. In addition, it updates two different sections of the manual to reflect newly released standard construction contract documents: the 2007 edition of the American Institute of Architects' A201 construction contract form and the new ConsensusDOCS construction contract documents.

D&O MAPS has been expanded to include the following policies and analyses.

Professional Liability Insurance features an update of the section dealing with professional liability application forms (section IV). This section examines the specific types of information contained in applications, the consequences of incorporating the application into the policy, remedies for false statements or material omissions in the application, and miscellaneous application-related issues. In addition, the supplement contains a revision of the professional liability markets discussion (also found in section IV). This update analyzes these markets, which include excess and surplus lines insurers, Lloyd’s, captives/risk retention groups, and risk purchasing groups. Lastly, there is an updated Topical Index.

Other Updates

The May 1, 2008 edition of the National Flood Insurance Program's Flood Insurance Manual is now available to subscribers to Commercial Property Insurance or Personal Risk Management and Insurance.

Forms

This month 721 forms and endorsements have been added to the Forms manuals. These include new state-specific and countrywide commercial excess forms, state-specific commercial auto forms, state-specific homeowners forms, state-specific interline forms, and state-specific businessowners forms. The Forms manuals now include more than 20,350 sample policy forms.

Lastly, the ACORD Forms manual has been updated (thru April 2008) with new and revised forms. The ACORD Forms manual now includes more than 615 forms.