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M4.4 Earthquake Near Pasadena Felt out to California’s High Desert

Article 0 Comments The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that a magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck an area southeast of of Highland Park, California on Monday. The quake was 7.4 miles deep and struck at 12:20 p.m. PST, according to the USGS. Media reports from around Southern California portrayed an area on heightened, if not temporary, alert for emergency responders and residents, who felt the shaking as far as the high desert area of Victorville. The shaking had the Los Angeles Fire Department on alert, with crews at 106 fire stations doing surveys of their districts. There were no reports of injuries or structural damage, the department said when the check was complete, according to a CNN report. Minor damage was reported in Pasadena, a few miles from the epicenter. A pipe broke at Pasadena City Hall, sending a stream of water flowing out onto the sidewalk and roughly 200 employees were evacuated from the building, ABC News reported. The LA Times reported the quake was centered on the Puente Hills thrust fault system, the network that produced the 1987 Whittier Narrows M5.9 earthquake that caused $358 million in damage. Topics California Catastrophe Natural Disasters Earthquake Was this article valuable? Thank you!...

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Budget Deficit Hits $1.5T as Fiscal Year Nears End

The interest burden on outstanding U.S. debt remained a major drag on the budget. Interest costs in the first 10 months of the fiscal year totalled $956 billion, up 32% from 2023. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest-rate hiking campaign, aimed at quelling inflation, has made debt more expensive to issue for the federal government. The weighted average interest rate on outstanding U.S. interest-bearing government debt was 3.33% at the end of July — the highest since January 2010 and up about half a percentage point from a year before. (Credit: Adobe Stock) Copyright 2024 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Walnut Insurance Secures $4.6M to Transform Insurance Distribution with Embedded Technology 0

Walnut Insurance Secures $4.6M to Transform Insurance Distribution with Embedded Technology

Walnut is revolutionizing insurance distribution by enabling partner-driven growth through technology solutions for insurers and enterprise businesses Toronto, ON (Aug. 8, 2024) – Walnut, an innovative force in the insurance distribution industry, is pleased to announce the successful close of its latest funding round, securing $4.6M. The investment will be used to expand Walnut’s groundbreaking embedded insurance technology platform for insurers, brokers and enterprise businesses looking to participate in the future of insurance distribution. The round was led by NAventures, National Bank of Canada’s corporate venture capital arm with participation from TELUS Global Ventures, Diagram Ventures, Portage, and Highline Beta. The funding from some of Canada’s leading investors represents a pivotal milestone for Walnut as it accelerates efforts to modernize and streamline insurance distribution. Diagram has recently expanded its strategy beyond its well-known venture studio model to include external investments. Walnut is amongst the first few of this kind in the Diagram portfolio, highlighting their confidence in the team’s potential to revolutionize the insurance landscape. Walnut’s approach to insurance distribution leverages cutting-edge technology and strategic partnerships to create a sustainable and efficient business model. By embedding insurance products directly into the products and platforms of enterprise businesses and financial institutions,...

Ledger Investing Expands Capabilities to Further Advance the Casualty ILS Market 0

Ledger Investing Expands Capabilities to Further Advance the Casualty ILS Market

Establishment of new subsidiaries and agreement signifies watershed moment for maturation of casualty ILS market New York, NY (Aug. 6, 2024) – Ledger Investing, the leading marketplace connecting insurance risk to capital, announced today an expansion of its capabilities within the casualty insurance-linked securities (ILS) market with the launch of two new Cayman-based subsidiaries: Ledger Re SPC, a reinsurer providing institutional investors access to casualty ILS, and Ledger ILS Services, a provider of underwriting and risk management services. Ledger Investing has pioneered the development of casualty ILS since its founding in 2017 and the formation of these business segments further cements its leading role in helping managing general agents (MGAs) and (re)insurers source capital in the ILS market. In another sign of the company’s momentum, Ledger Investing is also delighted to announce that the casualty ILS funds previously managed by Ledger, will now be managed by the casualty team at Fermat, leveraging Fermat’s extensive experience in ILS asset management. Ledger Investing will continue to provide support services for those underlying casualty ILS investments. John Seo, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Fermat, emphasized the value of casualty ILS as an asset class: “Fermat continues to see growing investor appetite for alternative...

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Illinois Company Fined $138K for Selling Unregistered Pesticide Product

Article 0 Comments The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a settlement with Amerikal Products Corp. of Waukegan, Illinois, for allegedly selling and distributing an unregistered pesticide product in violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Amerikal Products will stop producing and selling the product and will pay a $138,762 penalty. Amerikal Products allegedly sold or distributed the unregistered pesticide, Genesis 950 Concentrate, which it claimed could be used to kill bacteria, germs, and viruses. Under FIFRA, products that claim to kill, destroy, prevent, or repel bacteria or viruses are considered pesticides. All pesticides distributed or sold in the United States are required to be registered by the EPA to ensure that the products perform as intended, and will not harm people, non-target species, or the environment when used as directed. Pesticidal claims can only be made for products that have been registered with EPA. Source: EPA Topics Illinois Was this article valuable? Thank you! Please tell us what we can do to improve this article. Submit No Thanks Thank you! % of people found this article valuable. Please tell us what you liked about it. Submit No Thanks Here are more articles you may enjoy. The most important...

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LPL Updates Brand at Yearly Conference

Topics include artificial intelligence, behavioral finance, estate planning, client segmentation and marketing. Some of the event’s keynote speakers are Olympic medalist Apolo Ohno and former NFL Super Bowl champion Jon Dorenbos, who also was a two-time Pro Bowler. A registration desk for LPL Financial’s Focus event at the San Diego Convention Center on Aug. 11, 2024 “We are thrilled to gather in San Diego for the largest Focus event in LPL history … ,” President and CEO Dan Arnold said in a statement. “We are investing back into our winning model to create unprecedented flexibility in how advisors affiliate” with the firm. Last week, LPL Financial recruited Houston-based advisor Alberto Francis to its high-net-worth-focused employee affiliation model from Bank of America Private Bank. Francis’ move came about two months after LPL recruited its first advisors to the new HNW channel — which was launched in November — in Oklahoma City. The independent broker-dealer’s advisor headcount was 23,462 as of June 30— up 1,520 from a year ago and 578 from the first quarter of 2024. Its total advisory and brokerage assets were $1.5 trillion at the end of the second quarter, up 21% from Q2’23.

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Markets Go on Wild Ride in Week Marked by Forced Selling

What You Need to Know With many asset groups not yet screaming economic angst, one bullish mantra is starting to emerge from the noise: Buy the dip. Panicked moves were the theme of the week, particularly Monday. Still, almost as quickly as it blew up, volatility eased, and the S&P 500 staged its biggest rally since 2022. It started, innocently enough, in markets, when high-flying tech stocks started giving back gains that nearly all of Wall Street was convinced had gone too far. Roughly a month into a trauma that expanded this week to encompass everything from emerging-country currencies to Japanese shares — before defusing almost as fast — a lot of people worried about the economy are hoping markets are where it will stay. A signature fact of the worst turbulence of 2024 remains how much of it is confined to excesses wrought by traders. Speculators exploiting an ever-weakening yen got chased out of cross-border wagers. Quants who’d been ringing up gains for months suffered a comeuppance. Popular options bets premised on calm briefly blew up. In short, while economic fears lit the match that fueled the selloff’s loudest bursts, a daisy chain of leverage drove a slew of market reversals that muddy the...

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BofA Private Bank Hires Citi’s Palacio in South Florida Push

Bank of America Corp. hired private banker Luke Palacio from Citigroup Inc. as it seeks to capture more business serving wealthy individuals in South Florida. Palacio is joining Bank of America Private Bank in October as the Miami senior market executive, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News. In this new role, he will focus on growing the firm’s ultra-high-net-worth and family office business development. “In line with our priorities, we are making a strategic decision to expand South Florida,” Hong Ogle, southeast and southwest division executive at Bank of America Private Bank, said in the memo. A representative for Bank of America confirmed the contents of the memo. For the biggest U.S. banks, wealth management has been a fast-growing, competitive business. They’ve poured resources into the sector to lure new clients who bring additional assets to invest.

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California Commissioner Moves to Implement Insurance Rate Review Reforms

Article 0 Comments California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara on Friday released a statement on his latest administrative action designed to address the state’s homeowners insurance crisis. Lara today issued a bulletin implementing rate review reforms he says will help stabilize the state’s insurance marketplace, which includes reforms included in budget trailer language that Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced in May. Newsom first made the proposal to speed up the rate filing process while discussing the state’s budget during a press conference in May. Related: California Commissioner Orders Insurance Cancelation Moratorium for 185K Residents The new proposal requires the California Department of Insurance to respond to rate requests from insurers in 120 days. If an insurer requests a rate hike on an average of more than 7%, the CDI must provide insurers with a suggested rate in 120 days. Home insurance rates are on the rise, and availability has also become a concern, as many insurers are pulling back from the wildfire prone state. Proposed solutions to the crisis have included finding ways to expedite rate filings, enabling insurers to use reinsurance rates in filings, as well as enabling them to use catastrophe modeling to set rates. Related: California’s Park Fire Continues...

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Judge Tosses Suit Alleging Excessive Force During Dakota Access Pipeline Protest

Article 0 Comments BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal judge in North Dakota has thrown out the remainder of a lawsuit by an Arizona man who alleged excessive force was used against him when he was protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline. In 2019, Marcus Mitchell sued several law enforcement officers, the city of Bismarck and Morton County. He alleged officers targeted him during a January 2017 clash and struck him in his left eye with a bean bag round, injuring him. His lawsuit alleged excessive force was used and that Mitchell’s constitutional rights were violated. In 2020, U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor granted motions to dismiss Mitchell’s complaint. But in 2022, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed part of the judge’s ruling and sent some of Mitchell’s claims back to a lower court to be reconsidered. The defense denied Mitchell’s allegations earlier this year and asked the judge to throw out the case. On Tuesday, Traynor granted the defense motions for summary judgment and tossed the case. Mitchell failed to show that either of two officers he accused intended to hurt him, the judge ruled. He found that the officers did not use...