Author: completebodyneeds

This article is part of a sponsored series by Risk & Insurance Education Alliance. Do you work with contractors or restaurants? Maybe Workers Compensation is your field? Or maybe you have clients or an employer with cyber or environmental risks that you help manage? The Risk & Insurance Education Alliance created certifications designed around your needs. How Can I Learn More About Contractor Risks and Their Management? The 16-hour Contractors Risk Professional (Contractors RiskPRO) course, launched in 2025, furnishes essential knowledge of the risk exposures contractors face. Participants examine contract provisions, property exposures and coverages, liability issues, and the distinctions…

Oil and gas producers’ swelling power needs are hitting the West Texas region just as technology companies target the world’s most productive shale basin for data centers, sending electricity demand soaring. The top boss at Diamondback Energy Inc., one of the Permian Basin’s largest producers, predicts his company’s need for power will double over the next decade, even if it keeps production flat. Citigroup Inc. analysts warned Thursday that the region could even face outages next summer. “Electricity consumption for the Permian has just gone through the roof,” Diamondback Chief Executive Officer Kaes Van’t Hof said in an interview published…

Small businesses’ overall satisfaction with small commercial insurers rose 15 points (to 713 on a 1,000-point scale), driven by improvements in digital support and rates, according to JD Power’s 2026 U.S. Small Commercial Insurance Study that surveyed 2900 customers earlier this year. The biggest gains resulted from improved digital channels (+29 points), price for coverage (+16 points), problem resolution (+16 points) and product/coverage offerings (+16 points), according to the study which examines overall customer satisfaction among small commercial insurance customers with 50 or fewer employees. Seven core dimensions are examined on a poor-to-perfect rating scale (in order of importance: trust;…

Four patients were affected and one of them was paralyzed after a pre-surgery drug mix-up at a Nashville hospital, local news outlets reported. A 72-year-old woman, Glenda Dorton, reportedly received a spinal injection of potassium instead of anesthesia before her knee-replacement surgery on Aug. 14 at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown, The Tennessean and other news sites reported. The surgery seemed to have gone well until Dorton awoke later and discovered she could not feel or move anything from her chest down, her daughter told the newspaper and a TV news station. The woman was rushed to surgery at another Ascension…

NVIDIA has just made an argument that should matter far beyond the semiconductor industry. In a recent post, the company described AI-factory compute as an emerging investable infrastructure asset, supported by financing platforms with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR that are designed to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital over time. The underwriting logic is familiar: customer quality, demand, utilization, cash flow and residual value. That matters because it signals a broader transition. Artificial intelligence is no longer being treated only as software expense. It is becoming productive infrastructure. NVIDIA puts the point plainly: an…

Abbott said on Thursday it reached a $670 million settlement with three law firms to resolve legal claims by 2,000 people who alleged harms relating to the company’s specialty formulas for preterm infants. The settlement includes one large case in which Abbott had already been ordered to pay $495 million. In 2024, a jury in St. Louis found that Abbott’s infant formula caused an Illinois girl to develop necrotizing enterocolitis, a dangerous bowel disease. Abbott had been appealing that verdict to Missouri’s Supreme Court, after a state court of appeals affirmed the judgment in May 2026. About 1,000 similar lawsuits…

Megan Vernon The MEMIC Group, headquartered in Portland, Maine, added Megan Vernon and Nikko Severson to its loss control team. Vernon rejoins MEMIC as a loss control consultant serving Maine policyholders and brings six years of experience in workplace safety and risk management. She previously served as a health and safety content specialist at Safesite, focused on digital safety management, as well as an operations specialist at Foresight Commercial Insurance. Nikko Severson Severson joins MEMIC as a loss control consultant with more than a decade of experience in environmental health and safety. Based in Connecticut, he will work with policyholders…

Brokerage Lockton said it launched a U.S. Aviation Practice to help aviation and aerospace organizations navigate increasingly complex operational, regulatory, geopolitical, and insurance market challenges. Taylor Anderson has been appointed to lead the practice. The promotion follows even years as Lockton’s senior vice president, defense & aerospace for the southeastern U.S. Lockton said the new aviation practice strengthens coordination among Lockton’s aviation specialists and industry resources—including aligning with the firm’s global network—to deliver tailored risk advisory, insurance placement, and strategic risk management solutions for clients across the global aviation and aerospace ecosystem. The practice will focus on: Enhancing client service…

Jewelers Mutual Group announced that Chief Executive Officer Scott Murphy will retire at the end of 2026, following twelve years of leadership that fundamentally reshaped the company and its place in the industry. Mike Alexander, currently serving as President, will succeed Murphy as President and CEO effective January 1, 2027. Murphy will continue to serve as a member of Jewelers Mutual’s board of directors. Murphy joined Jewelers Mutual as CEO in January 2015 to lead a company with more than a century of heritage and a clear opportunity to lead it into a new era. Murphy’s accomplishments include expanding the…

Massachusetts lawmakers are seeking to establish the nation’s most stringent state-level safeguards for artificial intelligence, a proposal that’s divided an industry the governor’s office is concurrently seeking to woo. An economic development bill passed by the state Senate last month included a requirement that leading AI labs undergo independent reviews of the catastrophic risks posed by their frontier models at least once every 120 days, a first for a US state. The findings would be made public, though the state couldn’t use them to halt AI development. The provisions go further than other recent laws in California, New York and…