Ride-Share Coverage Becoming a Hot Topic in Sacramento

Undoubtedly, many of our members are aware of the tragic accident on New Year’s Eve in which an Uber driver struck and killed a six-year-old girl in a San Francisco crosswalk. I learned, in attending the Legislative Action Day for the Association of California Insurance Companies (ACIC) in Sacramento this month, that the fallout from this accident has come to the attention of the California Department of Insurance (CDI).

In the wake of the accident, both the driver’s commercial and personal carriers declined to cover the resulting claims. The commercial carrier declined due to the fact that the driver did not have a paying passenger at the time; the personal carrier declined because he was available to pick up customers and had his application active at the time of the accident.

CDI held a hearing on the issue and is seeking solutions to ensure that this kind of claims result does not recur, and this is certainly an area where surplus lines insurers and brokers may have a good opportunity to step in. We would advise our members to familiarize themselves with this case and to consider whether this is a line of business where they can provide solutions.

SLA Leverages Industry Partnerships to Support California Brokers in Hawaii

As executive director of SLA, one of my most important jobs is building relationships with key partners in the industry. Recently, this effort to build bridges bore fruit when we learned that a bill introduced in Hawaii, House Bill 2048, would impose onerous regulatory burdens on California surplus line brokers trying to insure interests in the Aloha State. The bill, if enacted, would have made it virtually impossible to write certain types of nonadmitted business there, by applying upwards of 50 statutory provisions to surplus line policies that previously had not been applied, in recognition of the fundamental difference between admitted and surplus line policies.

While SLA has no direct stake in the legislative process in Honolulu, a number of our brokers do place policies in Hawaii. Therefore, we provided advisory support to the National Association of Professional Surplus Line Offices (NAPSLO) and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), both of which testified against the legislation, in order to help look out for its members’ interests. Within days, the bill was postponed indefinitely. SLA will continue to monitor this legislation and will be ready to lend all necessary support to its industry allies in the event that Hawaii legislators decide to take it up again.

It is our job here at SLA to look out for our members’ interests wherever they may be. My staff and I will continue to build bridges with other leading insurance organizations so that we can be in a position to work for our members even in places where we do not have a seat at the table.

SLA Unveils New, Modern Logo

SLA’s Board of Directors recently approved a new logo reflecting a new, modern outlook at SLA, more in keeping with our association’s role as a bridge between brokers and CDI, and between the admitted and nonadmitted markets. We think it puts a new face on our association and creates an image of a forward-looking, thinking organization on the cutting edge of our industry.

SLA has begun using the new logo immediately on all new published products and will do so at SLA-sponsored events. In combination with our redesigned, more functional website, which we expect to have in place this year, our logo will project a fresher, state-of-the-art, user-friendly association that is more in touch with its members and its potential partners.