Author: completebodyneeds

Ciara Billie was about to step into the shower of her newly built townhome on the Hollywood Seminole Reservation in South Florida when her ceiling began to crumble and an air-conditioning vent crashed down on her toilet. For months, Billie said she had experienced problems with her home. The roof had to be repaired. The floors were buckling. And then there was the mold. It started on the laundry-room ceiling and popped up around vents in the bedrooms and bathrooms, Billie said, and crept up the exterior walls and onto the windowsills. “I feel like the mold just ran us…

U.S. claim volume fell 8.9% from last year, with total claims dipping 13.1% below the five-year average, despite several large catastrophe events, said a new report. Changes in policy language and policy provisions are a big factor in suppressing the volume, according to authors of Verisk’s property report on the first quarter. “We’re really starting to see increased usage across the board of those ACV (actual cash value)-only loss provisions and loss settlements and endorsements than we have in the past,” said Susan Fleming, vice president of business intelligence and insights at Verisk. Verisk is seeing more carriers using the…

Insurance agency ALKEME Insurance said it acquired eight agencies across the U.S. over the second quarter 2026 to enhance its property/casualty offerings in growing markets. Terms of the deals were not disclosed. The newly acquired firms include: LG Insurance (Long Branch, New Jersey) – A P/C agency specializing in the high-value residential market for personal lines and the hospitality and construction sectors for commercial lines. Blue Lion Insurance (Chandler, Arizona) – With operations in Arizona and Washington, serves personal and business lines clients with a focus on contractors and hard-to-place surplus lines. Top Floor Insurance (Atlanta, Georgia) – Focused exclusively…

With wildfires burning across many Western states, wildland firefighters gathered to pay tribute to three of their own who died after they were trapped by flames a week ago. Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson were remembered on Sunday as courageous public servants who left a lasting impact on the communities where they worked. “They showed up to make order out of chaos day after day with purpose, dedication and heart,” U.S. Wildland Fire Service Chief Brian Fennessy said during a memorial service in Grand Junction, Colorado, near where the firefighters died while battling flames on the Colorado-Utah border.…

Strong winds and dry thunderstorms are raising the risk of fast-moving wildfires across much of the U.S. West, where forecasters warned conditions will favor new ignitions and rapid fire spread through Thursday. An elevated fire-weather outlook, Level 1 on the Storm Prediction Center’s three-tier scale, is in effect from California’s Sierra Nevada to western Colorado. Red flag warnings have also been issued for parts of Washington, Idaho and Utah. Thunderstorms are expected from Idaho south into northern Arizona and New Mexico, according to Nick Nauslar, a fire science and operations officer at the Storm Prediction Center. Some of these will…

Following several quarters of record order books, a skilled-labor shortage is testing the limits of growth for the craft-labor providers who build data centers across the US. While some executives have downplayed the strain, others acknowledge that a lack of electricians, pipe fitters and site supervisors is forcing them to turn away work or poach crews from smaller contractors to keep projects staffed. Forward‑looking earnings estimates underscore the bottleneck. Revenue growth for major craft‑labor suppliers including Sterling Infrastructure Inc., MasTec Inc., Quanta Services Inc., Emcor Group Inc. and Comfort Systems USA Inc. is generally expected to moderate after a blockbuster…

The Connecticut Insurance Department (CID) is seeking a consultant to conduct a study and present options to improve the liability insurance market for nonprofit organizations operating in the state. A report issued in January by a working group of legislators, brokers, insurers, regulators, and nonprofit leaders found that the nonprofit human services sector is experiencing rising costs and reduced availability of liability and other property/casualty insurance coverage. In addition to recommending strengthening nonprofits’ risk management practices, the working group offered several other recommendations for consideration. These include exploring a state-run captive or pooling mechanism to operate alongside the commercial insurance…

A Qatari LNG tanker was still stuck off Oman on Wednesday awaiting salvage operations, shipping data showed, a day after it was hit by a projectile, while the U.S. military said two other tankers had been targeted by Iran in recent days. The attacks on the tankers prompted Washington to revoke a license allowing Iran to sell oil and U.S. forces to strike Iranian targets overnight. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday an interim agreement to end the war with Iran was “over,” comments that triggered a 5% jump in global oil prices. The head of the U.N. shipping agency…

This article is part of a sponsored series by OIP Insurtech. Fourteen years of working inside carrier, MGA, and brokerage operations gives you a particular view of how these businesses actually run. It is rarely the same view leadership has. The gap between those two pictures tends to come down to the same thing: accumulated workflow debt. Processes that made sense when the business was smaller were left in place as the operation grew around them, quietly becoming more expensive with every year that passed without a redesign. OIP Insurtech sees this pattern across every engagement, regardless of the client’s…

Allianz SE plans to eliminate hundreds of positions at its assistance and travel insurance subsidiary Allianz Partners as the company pushes forward with implementing artificial intelligence solutions. The cuts, which they expect to take the forms of severance agreements, early retirements and similar options, will amount to between 1,500 to 1,800 positions across Europe, the unit’s chief executive officer Tomas Kunzmann said at an event late Tuesday in Munich. “Over the past six months, we have negotiated with our colleagues on the works councils,” Kunzmann said, adding that voluntary leave offers had been extended in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, as…