As college classes are set to begin, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario reminded parents to consider their family’s changing insurance needs.

“Hundreds of thousands of young Pennsylvanians will be heading to college in the next few weeks,” Commissioner Ario reported. “It can be a hectic and emotional time, but in the rush to begin the semester, parents should take time to review insurance coverage needs.” Read more…

(Reuters) – Insurers began to assess the damage on Friday after massive storms, including tornadoes, hit southern Ontario late on Thursday, killing one person and destroying homes, businesses and cars.

“At this point it is still too early to say how many of our policy holders are affected. What I can say is that it will be a very busy few days for our independent brokers,” said Ian Blair, a spokesman for Intact Financial Corp, one of Canada’s largest property and casualty insurers. Read more…

The major impetus behind health care reform is not economic – it is moral. The claim that health care is a moral right has motivated enormous government coercions against the medical industry. But this moral claim has blinded people to the fact that huge price increases have necessarily followed the growth of the coercions.
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SPRINGFIELD. The Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association is distributing $10.6 million in rebates to cities and towns that buy their workers compensation and property casualty insurance through the association.
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(Reuters) – AIG’s former Chief Executive Hank Greenberg agreed to pay $15 million to settle government allegations that he had cooked the books to inflate the insurer’s earnings in the first half of this decade, the Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday.

Howard Smith, American International Group Inc.’s former chief financial officer, also agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle SEC charges relating to his and Greenberg’s involvement in sham accounting transactions that artificially boosted the insurer’s financial results between 2000 and 2005, the SEC said. Read more…

(BuffaloNews) – State insurance regulators recovered $13.6 million from insurance companies between April 1 and June 30 for almost 3,000 consumers and health care providers who complained to the state Insurance Department.

That’s up 60 percent from $8.5 million recovered in the first quarter, for a total of $22 million for the first six months. Read more…

Progressive Insurance, the number one insurer of motorcycles in the United States, is a presence at the Sturgis Rally.

Offering information about motorcycle insurance and selling roasted corn, Progressive hopes to not only gain customers but to also make a difference. Read more…

(Bloomberg) – GMAC Inc., the money-losing lender labeled too big to fail by the U.S., has used government guarantees to slash its borrowing costs and undercut profitable lenders, lifting its bond prices by 80 percent since March.

GMAC sold $3.5 billion of federally backed bonds in June at a 2.2 percent yield, 65 percent below its average borrowing costs in the first quarter. GMAC’s bank, renamed Ally in May, cut the rate it pays on 12-month certificates of deposit by half in the past year to 2 percent. Read more…

Flat salaries coupled with rising health care costs is a refrain ringing (does a refrain really ring?) through many workplaces these days.

It’s a tune that’s now reaching city hall.

Insurance costs for Fayetteville city workers are due to increase 7.5 percent next year, said Missy Leflar, Fayetteville human resources director. This translates to $240,000 a year. To offset these costs, half of the increase will be saddled by the employees. Read more…

(Dow Jones) – Drivers of hybrid cars frequently get a discount on their auto insurance policies just for being “green,” but one insurer argues that such discounts makes sense, and money.

That’s the way Farmers Insurance Group views the 10% hybrid car insurance discount the company pioneered in 2005.

“We thought it was the responsible thing to do,” said Brian Dwyer, senior vice president of auto for Farmers, which is a unit of Zurich Financial Group AG ( ZFSVY). Farmers began offering the discount in California, home to about 25% of all hybrid vehicles registered in the U.S. “We had a theory that it might turn out to be a better loss ratio,” Dwyer said. Read more…