Much like with auto insurers in the early 20th Century, it’s only been recently that the insurance industry has realized how significant—in both size and importance—cyber exposures are. Further, this significance will likely continue to increase for the foreseeable future, as businesses continue to become more technology-driven and hostile actors continue to find new ways to commit cybercrimes that steal from and disrupt businesses.  

Two industries not typically associated with innovation are insurance and agriculture. Today, it’s an inaccurate perception. Agriculture is perhaps the world’s original story of innovation. For millennia, agriculture’s history has been one of resourcefulness, and finding ways to grow food through every form of peril, from pests to drought. The modern agricultural industry, agribusiness, has continued that story of innovation with new products and novel approaches that save water, reduce crop disease and increase crop yields. Farmers are even relying on technological advancements like drones, robots and gene editing in their operations.

Pinnacle University is an annual event hosted by Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, Inc., where analysts and actuarial science students from various universities collaborate to research and present on a relevant topic in the insurance industry. This year, our group explored how universities obtain insurance.

The Delaware Captive Insurance Association (DCIA) held its Spring Forum May 7-8 at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware. Captive service providers, captive owners and Delaware’s captive regulators gathered in attendance for sessions covering a range of relevant topics. The conference carried regulation as its unofficial theme, perhaps not unexpectedly, with each session analyzing a different aspect or angle. The impact of politics on captive regulatory decisions, the legal hurdles of insuring the key players of the cannabis industry, and the various state-specific treatments of self-procurement tax were a few of the topics covered.

A Pinnacle client recently inquired about a paper regarding an approach to estimating the maximum premium appropriate for a captive insurance company. The author sought to determine a ceiling on the premium a company might pay for insurance by treating insurance as a put option and applying a popular financial tool, the Black-Scholes model.