April 19, 2022
A subsidiary of American Family Insurance now faces a federal class-action lawsuit in Florida, alleging it regularly charged auto policyholders a cancellation fee that was never mentioned in the policy. The size of the class will be at least 100 people and will include everyone who was insured under Permanent General Assurance’s non-standard auto coverage from 2015 to 2020, when the initial complaint was filed, U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas, of Miami, said in his order last week certifying the class. The plaintiffs, represented by the Zebersky, Payne, Shaw, Lewenz firm in Fort Lauderdale, and others, charge that the policy promised to refund 90% of the “pro-rata unearned premium” if the motorist cancels the policy. Instead, Permanent General charged a “short rate cancellation premium” based on the amount of premiums that were never paid by the insureds, the amended complaint reads. The suit gave this example: Plaintiff Dorine Conner renewed her policy in 2019 and timely paid her $259 monthly premiums. When she canceled, she expected a refund of $240 in unearned premium, minus the 10% as stated in the policy. Instead, she was charged an $89 penalty and received only $153 from the insurer. For another driver, Permanent General assessed a penalty of $620 – higher than the policyholder’s monthly premium, the suit alleges. The complaint alleges breach of contract, unjust enrichment by the insurer, and unfair business practices. The judge found that the plaintiff’s motion to certify the case met all the case law requirements for a class. “The Court rejects Defendant’s argument that class certification is inappropriate because ‘not all Plaintiffs have a common contract,'” the judge noted. “First, the suggestion that the insurance application, not the policy, is the contract is a distinction without a difference. It is the insurance application and the insurance policy which together constitute the contract.”
Non-standard auto policies are short-term policies often purchased by people who have difficulty affording coverage through standard carriers, and cancellations are common, the court said. Permanent General has denied the allegations. The carrier’s attorneys also argued that Conner could not represent the class because she was convicted of kidnapping in 2001 and served 12 years in prison. “Based on her serving significant time in prison, Connor does not possess the personal characteristics and integrity to fulfill the fiduciary role of class representative,” the company argued. The judge said that argument “is wholly without merit,” and that a criminal conviction does not automatically disqualify a class representative. This is not the first time that an American Family Mutual Insurance unit has been accused of underpaying. In February, attorneys in Illinois proposed a class action against American Family for allegedly using a “typical negotiation” method of determining the value of totaled vehicles. The plaintiffs said the method was unlawful and significantly undervalued their payments in claims. That suit was voluntarily dismissed, without prejudice, in early April, court records show. No explanation was given.

Federal Judge Certifies Class Action vs. PGAC on Auto Policy Fees

| Insurance Business Canada
Definity Financial Corporation – the parent company of Economical Insurance , Sonnet Insurance, Petline Insurance, and Family Insurance Solutions – recently announced its commitment to achieve net-zero emissions for both its operations and investments by 2040 or sooner. To meet this commitment, the multi-channel property & casualty insurer has established and published interim targets to chart its progress. Definity’s priorities are: to offer insurance products and services that help reduce the impacts of climate change on clients and communities; to identify and manage climate-related risks across the enterprise; to reduce direct climate impacts of its operations; to manage the climate-related risks and opportunities for its investments; to advocate for a net-zero emissions future; and to disclose its progress alignment with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Definity’s purpose statement is to “build a better world by helping clients and communities adapt and thrive”. This stems from Definity’s pre-IPO days when Economical, a 150-year-old mutual insurer, was focused on supporting Canadian communities with a ‘neighbours helping neighbours’ ethos. “That legacy of the mutual insurer really influences our culture today,” said Brendan Seale, AVP & head of environment, social & governance (ESG) at Definity Financial Corporation. Seale joined Economical in July 2021 ahead of its historic demutualization in November 2021, and has since been building out the firm’s ESG function and climate strategy. “It’s really a culmination and bringing together of a lot of good work that has been going on in the organization for quite some time,” he said. “With the establishment of Definity, we’ve really embraced that core purpose of building a better world by helping clients and communities adapt and thrive, and with that comes a commitment to sustainability and ESG. “As a P&C insurer and a risk manager in the economy, we see this [climate change] as a defining issue of our time. It has profound implications for society, for our economy, and for human welfare. We want to play a supporting role in that transition to a net zero future and help to build resilience and adaptation capabilities in society as well.”
In its quest to reach net-zero emissions in its operations by 2040 or sooner, Definity will take an active approach to reducing the carbon intensity of its day-to-day business, including natural gas and electricity consumption in buildings, fleet vehicles and more. Its interim targets are to hit 30% reduction by 2025, and 50% reduction by 2030, relative to a 2019 baseline. “During the pandemic, when our office buildings have been largely empty, our corporate services team has taken the opportunity to make some significant improvements to our facilities and improve their overall energy efficiency,” Seale told Insurance Business. “We’ve made improvements and upgrades to our heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and lighting systems – and [moving forwards] we’ll be looking to ensure that we secure renewable electricity in an equivalent amount of what we consume across Canada. “We have a fleet of vehicles that are used by our claims adjusters to go out and assess damages and adjust our claims and so forth, so we’ll look to make that fleet of vehicles more fuel efficient and convert to electric vehicles over time. Those are within the Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which are the emissions and fuel combustion through your direct operations, and also the electricity that you purchase to run your facility. Then we’ll also start to look more broadly at our value chain initiatives, which are considered the Scope 3 emissions. That’s looking at things like the footprint of the goods and services that we purchase, employee travel and commuting, among other things.”
Definity is also targeting net-zero emissions from investments by 2040 or sooner, inclusive of emissions associated with listed equities and corporate bonds. The insurer will take an investment approach to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of its portfolio, while seeking to maximize risk-adjusted returns. Its interim targets are to reach 30% reduction by 2025, and 65% reduction by 2030 on an intensity basis, relative to a 2020 baseline. A key part of Definity’s climate strategy is to provide insurance products and services that help reduce the impacts of climate change on clients and communities across Canada. This is something the insurer has been focused on for many years. “One of the things we can do – and we already do - is reward our clients’ efforts to prevent losses in the first place,” said Seale. “If there are any improvements made to a property, for example, to help manage stormwater or to reduce the risk of flooding in a basement through the installation of a backwater flow valve, we take that into account in how we price the premiums for our clients. We can adjust and reward people for those sorts of activities. We also offer a green endorsement when there’s a total loss or a need for a repair on a property, where we’ll contribute some additional funds in the claims process if the customer is pursuing more sustainable outcomes in repair or rebuilding.”
Through Sonnet – Definity’s direct-to-consumer insurance brand – the firm has a partnership with the FLO electric vehicle charging network, whereby clients can receive a discount on their insurance if they’re part of that network. “Those sorts of partnerships are things that we’ll be increasingly looking for in the future to really stimulate and attract and incentivize our clients and customers to make these sorts of improvements that will either help them to reduce their emissions or to mitigate climate related losses,” Seale explained. “And in our commercial underwriting activities, we really want to ensure that we’re a partner to our clients on their journey to a low carbon future. We will develop our underwriting strategy to support those objectives and really advocate and partner with our counterparties to achieve those shared goals.”
Definity encourages other organizations to develop ambitious strategies aligned to the goals of the Paris Agreement, to halve their emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It has stated 2040 (or sooner) as a reasonable timeframe to achieve its own net-zero ambitions after reviewing the nature of its footprint and its investment portfolio as a financial services company. “Speed is of the essence with climate change, to reduce emissions as quickly as we possibly can to avoid the worst impacts of climate change,” Seale emphasized. “The Paris Agreement objectives are really there for us to avoid the worst impacts of climate change that are anticipated. To the extent that we can go quicker and achieve these objectives sooner, that’s a positive, and we would encourage all actors to move as quickly as they can to decarbonize their operations as soon as possible.”   
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Definity's ESG head on the insurer's quest to "build a better world"

Malaysian Family Insurance Scheme to benefit 268,000 poor families - PM
25/03/2022 07:20 PM
KANGAR, March 25 (Bernama) -- The government has agreed to prepare the Malaysian Family Insurance Scheme to provide social protection to the 268,000 families in the poor and hardcore poor categories. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said that under this scheme, heads of households registered in the eKasih system would get the insurance coverage, with a premium of RM50 a year, and involved a cost of RM13.4 million. “If the head of household dies, the family will get RM10,000, permanent disability (RM10,000) and death due to accident (RM20,000). “Pru-Takaful BSN, through its corporate social responsibility (CSR) since 2018, has provided free insurance coverage of RM30,000 for heads of households registered through eKasih," he said when launching the Malaysian Family Aspiration Tour in Perlis 2022 here today. The Prime Minister said the government was also committed to strengthening the income of the target group through a programme to improve the living standards of the B40 community among the agrofood agriculture community. He said that through the programme, various types of assistance were distributed to 39,171 recipients with an allocation of RM109.7 million. He said a total of 1,300 paddy farmers had benefited from the Large-Scale SMART Paddy Field (SMART SBB) programme for the purpose of increasing the productivity of paddy cultivation. "The government also always listens to the complaints and requests of the Keluarga Malaysia and the latest decision implemented at the request of the public is the RM10,000 special withdrawal from the Employees Provident Fund (EPF)," he said. -- BERNAMA

General : Malaysian Family Insurance Scheme to benefit 268,000 poor families - PM

March 10, 2022
The AM Best rating firm has downgraded the credit rating and the outlook for Florida Family Insurance and its subsidiary, Florida Family Home Insurance Co. The rating firm said the companies’ long-term issuer credit rating has dropped from “bbb+ (good)” to “bbb (good).” The financial strength rating remains at “B++ (good).” But the future may be cloudy: AM Best revised its outlook for that rating, from stable to negative and the outlook for long-term issuer credit ratings also was marked as negative this week, the rating firm said in a news release. It’s the latest bit of bad news for Florida’s struggling property/casualty market and reflects storm losses and other factors that have eaten away at companies’ surplus amounts. “The downgrade of the long-term ICRs reflects AM Best’s concerns over Florida Family’s balance sheet strength following continued surplus erosion due to underwriting losses, significantly elevated underwriting leverage metrics, inconsistent reserve development, and a declining trend in risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Best’s Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR),” the rating firm reported. The capital ratio deterioration reflects “higher gross probable maximum losses (PMLs) that are a product of the group’s expansion of its new homeowners product, paired with less ground-up catastrophe reinsurance coverage, which collectively result in higher net PMLs across value-at-risk intervals.”
Florida Family companies’ balance sheet has also been affected by the need for more reinsurance. Management for the Bonita Springs-based insurers has taken steps to improve performance, AM Best said. These include rate increases, non-renewals of some policies, an end to new business writing in some parts of the state and what it called “effective management of assignment-of-benefits issues.”
The companies, which together make up the Florida Family Group, recently launched a new homeowners insurance product that has produced modest growth.

AM Best Downgrades Outlook for Florida Family Insurance Companies

Engagement Labs Releases New Study Ranking Brands with Greatest Sentiment
Carter's and Trader Joe's Lead Offline Sentiment, While American Family Insurance and Walmart's Great Value Also Switched Top Positions for the Most Positive Brands Online
Costco's Kirkland Brand Excels as the Only Brand Among Top Ten In Both Online and Offline Sentiment; Gillette with Most Notable Improvement in Brand Love
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NEW YORK, March 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Engagement Labs released its fifth annual ranking of America's "most loved" brands. Carter's, the retailer of children's apparel ranks first while Trader Joe's, the American grocery store, moved down to the second top spot of the list of brands most positively talked about in offline conversations, ahead of more than 650 brands across all consumer categories. Meantime, Great Value, a Walmart brand, and American Family Insurance also switched places for the top positions for the most loved brands in online talk. "This year's TotalSocial Most Loved Brands exhibit the vital consumer emotional connection with brands and demonstrates how the brand marketers have built and found opportunities even during the past two years of pandemic," said Steven Brown, president of Engagement Labs. "Brand love has been a major part of our work with Fortune 500 brands and continues to be a focus in 2022." Costco's Kirkland is the only brand to rank among brands both online and offline that shows the importance of marketing strategies that seek to activate both channels in driving business performance. Gillette's improvement in offline brand love grew the most last year than any other top 10 brand. Gillette has not been shy of the weighing in real-world conversations in social issues with ads such as  toxic masculinity  that demonstrates that when it comes to offline, its positive word of mouth rise above and resonates to consumers. Last year's net sentiment of consumer conversations is positive for everyday categories such as beauty and personal care, children's products, food and home. The importance of positive sentiment prevails as the "Great Resignation" ensues and more people adjust to hybrid lifestyle and preferring to stay at home to work remotely. This analysis ranks the most loved brands based on net positive conversations happening online (via social media) and offline (via face-to-face conversations as well as phone, emailing, texting, IM'ing, video chat – in other words, via any channel other than posting on social media) to determine its annual TotalSocial Brand Awards winners. MOST LOVED BRANDS OFFLINE
highest net sentiment online in 2021. The Difference Between Offline and Online Conversations
Online and offline discussions are two entirely different conversations, generally unrelated to each other, as Engagement Labs articles have shown in the Journal of Advertising Research and the MIT Sloan Management Review. Both types of conversations have an impact that leads to sales, but they do so very differently, and they require different marketing strategies. According to Engagement Labs data and analytics 19 percent of all consumer purchases are driven by these kinds of consumer conversations. "The modified life and return to some normality during 2021 reflect the brands on our 'most loved' brands list and brand landscape of who's earning the most positive recommendations from consumers," said Brown. "The rise of Lush, Trip Advisor, Kenmore, Mary Kay and Express online, as well as Dawn, Gillette, and Kirkland in the offline space reveals what consumers engage and talk about with great sentiment for the past year." "The goal of marketers is to be successful in achieving more positive conversations, both online and offline, to ultimately become "Conversation Commanders," as we have labeled the most successful brands in both conversation arenas. To achieve this, marketers need to have two separate measurement and marketing strategies, to make sure these separate, but equally important conversations are maximized." To learn more about Engagement Labs and how to increase your brand's consumer conversations in real life and online, reach out at: [email protected] . About Engagement Labs
Engagement Labs (TSXV: EL) is an industry-leading data and analytics firm that provides social intelligence for Fortune 500 brands and companies. The Company's TotalSocial® platform focuses on the entire social ecosystem by combining powerful online (social media) and offline (word of mouth) data with predictive analytics. Engagement Labs has a proprietary ten-year database of unique brand, industry and competitive intelligence, matched with its cutting-edge predictive analytics that use machine learning and artificial intelligence to reveal the social metrics that increase marketing ROI and top line revenue for its diverse group of clients. About TotalSocial Brand Awards – Most Loved Brands
The awards are based on the Company's proprietary TotalSocial® data and analytics platform, which continuously measures the online and offline social metrics that are proven drivers of business performance. These metrics, including both online and offline conversations against the following major conversation dimensions: net sentiment (the difference in the percent positive conversations minus negative), brand sharing (the extent to which people are sharing or talking about a brand's marketing or advertising), volume (a measure of how many conversations mention a brand) and influence (the extent to which an influential audience is talking about a brand). The Most Loved Award is given to brands with the highest net sentiment scores online and offline in 2021. For media inquiries please contact:
Vanessa Lontoc, VP of Marketing
Engagement Labs

08:01 ET
Consumers Reveal Most Loved Brands - Beauty and Personal Care Brands Lead Rankings

Acquired

Family Insurance was established in 1990 and serves the Corpus Christi, TX area through its two retail locations.

Date	10/4/2013
Round	Acquired
Amount
Investors	Confie
Valuation
Revenue	0 FY undefined
Sources	1

First funding	10/4/2013
Last Funding	10/4/2013
Investor	Confie
Rounds	1 Acquired
Board Seats
Type	Corporation
Location	California

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