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Your Client Is Forced to Retire Early. What Should They Do?

What You Need to Know An emergency fund can provide breathing room while assessing the situation. Securing health insurance on a spouse’s policy is often the cheapest and best option. Clients may consider getting into consulting or starting a business. Retirement planning is likely one of the main areas of focus in your work with clients. They rely on you to help them plan, save and invest for a comfortable retirement. In most cases, they likely have an age, or an age range, in mind to move forward into retirement. Things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes, clients will face an unplanned early retirement due to a job loss, a medical situation or other unforeseen circumstances. If this happens later in their working years, between about 55 and 65, there are some key decisions to be made. Here are several steps to best navigate this situation. Emergency Fund Part of ongoing planning should include maintaining a sufficient emergency fund. This will certainly not get clients through an unplanned retirement, but this money can provide some breathing room as they assess the initial impact of the situation and plan for the future. Financial experts typically suggest having at least six months’...

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Tropical Storm Francine Strengthens, Spurring Oil Shutdowns

Article 0 Comments Tropical Storm Francine strengthened as it moved north in the Gulf of Mexico, prompting oil drillers to evacuate crews and halt some offshore crude production, while the US Coast Guard warned shippers of approaching gale-force winds. Francine is expected to lash parts of the Gulf Coast with powerful winds and heavy rain as it heads for a Wednesday landfall as a full-blown hurricane, US government forecasters said in an 1 p.m. Houston-time advisory. The system located 450 miles (720 kilometers) south-southwest of Cameron, Louisiana, saw winds accelerate to 60 miles-per-hour from 50 mph earlier in the day. Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell Plc are among the companies taking measures such as evacuating workers from vulnerable installations, suspending drilling activities, and shutting in some wells. The storm’s forecast path intersects with fields that account for roughly 125,000 barrels of crude and 300 million cubic feet of natural gas on a daily basis, according to Bloomberg calculations of data from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Hurricane Center. On its expected track, Francine may rake nine major platforms, including Enchilada, Cerveza, Perdido and Hoover. That said, the storm probably won’t have a large impact...

Customers Favor AI-Based Technologies but Automakers May Not Have Best Advanced Tech Strategy: J.D. Power 0

Customers Favor AI-Based Technologies but Automakers May Not Have Best Advanced Tech Strategy: J.D. Power

Genesis ranks highest overall for tech innovation for fourth consecutive year; Hyundai ranks highest among mass market brands for fifth consecutive year Troy, MI (Aug. 29, 2024) – Are vehicle owners becoming overwhelmed with technology features that don’t solve a problem, don’t work, are difficult to use or are just too limited in functionality? The results of the J.D. Power 2024 U.S. Tech Experience Index (TXI) StudySM, suggest that could be the case. The study, which focuses on the user experience with advanced vehicle technologies as they come to market, finds that while owners offer praise for some advanced features, others are found to be lackluster. New Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies, like smart climate control, have quickly won popularity with those owners who have used it, yet recognition technologies such as facial recognition, fingerprint reader and interior gesture controls fall out of favor as they unsuccessfully try to solve a problem that owners didn’t know they had. For example, not only do owners say that interior gesture controls can be problematic (43.4 problems per 100 vehicles), but 21% of these owners also say this technology lacks functionality, according to newly added diagnostic questions in this year’s study. These performance metrics,...

Coalition Announces Reinsurance Intermediary Coalition Re 0

Coalition Announces Reinsurance Intermediary Coalition Re

Coalition Re to offer Active Cyber Reinsurance via two products supported by Aspen-led capacity San Francisco, CA (Sept. 9, 2024) — Coalition, the world’s first Active Insurance provider designed to prevent digital risk before it strikes, is pleased to announce the creation of its reinsurance intermediary, Coalition Re, to provide capacity for cyber reinsurance treaties and expand on its mission to protect more unprotected businesses. Coalition Re provides capacity for non-proportional cyber reinsurance treaties, as well as a white-labeled cyber insurance product with up to 100% quota share support for cedants seeking to offer cyber insurance as an endorsement to an existing insurance product offering. Both are available globally and supported by a robust panel of capacity providers led by Aspen, a leading specialty insurer and reinsurer. “In reinsurance, there is often a breakdown of information where reinsurers know less about policyholders than the primary insurers. Combine that with a lack of cyber expertise and proper data usage among reinsurers, and the result is inaccurately priced reinsurance contracts and a misconception around how to measure cyber accumulation exposure,” said Shawn Ram, Head of Insurance at Coalition. “Coalition Re is a new type of reinsurance provider whereby we equip carriers with...

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Latest IRS Sweep of Wealthy Tax Cheats Has Recovered $172M So Far

These are cases where the IRS has received third-party information — such as through W-2 and 1099 filings — indicating these people received income above $400,000 but failed to file a tax return. The separate campaign that was expanded in September is concentrated on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt. After collecting $38 million from more than 175 initial cases, the IRS expanded the effort last fall to around 1,600 cases. Nearly 80% of these 1,600 millionaires with delinquent tax debt have now made a payment, according to the IRS, leading to over $1.1 billion recovered. This is an additional $100 million since July, when Treasury and IRS announced reaching the $1 billion milestone. Credit: Adobe Stock 

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The Acquirer’s Big-Picture Checklist

What You Need to Know Firms must prioritize their ability to deliver the same level of service to clients. Details are crucial to avoiding costly and time-consuming missteps. Many of the best deals can be ones that you don’t complete. Acquiring a financial advisory practice requires taking a long, hard look at the firm you may be buying. Perhaps more importantly, you should start by looking in the mirror. The ultimate success of mergers-and-acquisition-based growth — especially at the financial advisor firm level — requires an honest assessment of readiness, a precise alignment of interests across all parties and prioritizing your team’s ability to deliver the same level of service to clients. Due diligence should not just be a careful review of the potential purchase. Instead, as a savvy buyer, you should use this process to ascertain if this path will lead you to your desired destination. Yes, inorganic growth presents incredible opportunities — enhancing valuations and providing access to additional talent as well as potential new services.  However, to paraphrase a parable often employed to keep you from following the crowd, just because everyone else is acquiring financial advisory practices doesn’t mean you should, too.  That said, and if this is a strategy that your...

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Voters Love No Tax on Tips, But Split Over $25K Housing Help

But it was also the most polarizing of the proposals: About twice as many Democrats supported the policy as Republicans. Voters say they they trust Harris more than Trump on housing costs, an issue where the former president once had an edge over President Joe Biden. Overall, 46% of swing-state voters said they trust Trump more on taxes than Harris, who’s trusted by 44%. But Harris has greatly improved the Democrats’ standing on the issue, narrowing a deficit that was as high as 16 percentage points when Biden led the ticket. Trump’s proposals — and, to a lesser extent, the competing plans from Harris — would come with a budget-busting price tag. A Bloomberg review of all Trump’s tax proposals estimates that they would add more than $10.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Harris’ would add about $2 trillion, which she’s said she’d offset with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. “These policies, on paper, are pretty popular,” said Eli Yokley, U.S. politics analyst for Morning Consult. “The long-term effects of them I don’t think voters think about.” While Harris is still putting out details of her tax plans, many of them mirror policies previously proposed...

Marsh McLennan and Zurich urge public-private action to bridge cyber protection gap and boost resilience 0

Marsh McLennan and Zurich urge public-private action to bridge cyber protection gap and boost resilience

New York, NY (Sept. 5, 2024) – A new whitepaper from Marsh McLennan, the world’s leading professional services firm in the areas of risk, strategy and people, and Zurich Insurance Group, a leading global multi-line insurer and provider of resilience services, highlights the critical need for greater public sector involvement to strengthen societal resilience in the event a catastrophic cyber event occurs. The whitepaper, Closing the cyber risk protection gap, emphasises the urgent need for innovative solutions to close the gap between risk and insurance – particularly for small and medium-size businesses that are often uninsured or underinsured – as rapidly-evolving cyber threats are outpacing the capacity of traditional insurance and risk management solutions to fully mitigate them. It highlights mass malware and mass cloud outage as examples of cyber incidents that are currently considered insurable up to a certain level of financial loss, and events such as critical infrastructure failure, which are generally considered uninsurable. John Doyle, President & Chief Executive Officer, Marsh McLennan, said: “The severe threat presented by cyber risks requires collective action to bridge the protection gap. The insurance industry and the public sector must fully understand the spectrum of insurable and currently non-insurable cyber events....

Leading Canadian Insurer Expands Vendor Agreement with Earnix to Implement Enterprise Rating Engine 0

Leading Canadian Insurer Expands Vendor Agreement with Earnix to Implement Enterprise Rating Engine

Earnix’s Ready for Guidewire accelerator will enable operational efficiencies and streamlined strategic growth Boston, MA (Aug. 27, 2024) – Earnix, the leading global provider of intelligent decisioning SaaS solutions for financial services, is pleased to announce that a leading Canadian financial services co-operative, Co-operators General Insurance Company (Co-operators) has successfully implemented the Earnix Enterprise Rating Engine as its production rating solution for homeowners’ insurance. Now, Co-operators is excited to use Earnix’s Ready for Guidewire accelerator to help further realize the benefits of a single pricing and rating platform by significantly streamlining  delivery of future lines of business. “Agility is critical to stay competitive in today’s rapidly changing market – the right tools and solutions can significantly impact our success in doing so,” said Amélie Beauregard, Vice President, Home and Auto Pricing at Co-operators. “We came on as an early adopter of Earnix’s Guidewire accelerator and have already seen gains in our speed to market driven by new operational efficiency. We look forward to seeing further enhancements from Earnix as we refine our approach.” Co-operators has been a longstanding Earnix customer since 2015. After eight years of successfully leveraging Earnix for modeling and analytical pricing, this implementation, which includes the enhanced...

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Louisiana Launches Lottery System for Fortify Homes Program Grants

Article 0 Comments The Louisiana Department of Insurance announced that registration for the next round of Louisiana Fortify Homes Program (LFHP) grants will open at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, September 18, and close at 5 p.m. on Friday, September 20. While previous grant rounds operated on a first-come, first-served basis, registration for this and future rounds will be conducted using a lottery system. To participate in the lottery, homeowners must register during the three-day period in September. Homeowners who attempted to apply during a previous round of grants but were not selected will need to register for this round. Once the lottery registration period closes, the LFHP will randomly select 300 participants from the pool of eligible registrants, and an additional 200 registrants will be placed on a waitlist for the same round. The LFHP will send an email notification to registrants who are selected to participate. This round will be open to residents of Louisiana’s Coastal Zone, which includes all or part of the following parishes: Ascension, Assumption, Calcasieu, Cameron, Iberia, Jefferson, Lafourche, Livingston, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Martin, St. Mary, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne and Vermilion. The LFHP is...