The insurance market goes through cycles. In a soft market, the prices go down, policies are favorable to the insured, and the underwriting is relaxed. When the market turns and hardens, that all goes away. Prices go up. Underwriting gets strict. Exclusions appear everywhere.

The indications are that we are involved in a serious hard market. There have been record insolvencies in Florida. Several carriers have stopped writing new business in California. Insurers in every state are reacting to the hardening market.

The Academy of Insurance has brought together a panel of experts to discuss what is going on in the market and how agents can respond to it. Our panel for this conversation includes two Academy faculty members, Nancy Germond and Bill Wilson. Our third member of the panel is a newcomer to the Academy, Scott Margraves.

Scott is nationally recognized as one of the top insurance professionals for his leadership and dedication to the insurance profession and has over thirty years of “hands-on” commercial property & casualty experience. As a front-line producer, Scott weathered five major hurricanes, three “five-hundred-year floods” and multiple catastrophic fire claims. Scott is an insurance industry expert that brings extensive experience in all aspects of property & casualty insurance, policy forms, claims, safety programs, HR coordination, and contract integration.

Academy Director of Education, Patrick Wraight, will moderate the conversation.