The number of people who aren’t carrying car insurance is growing, according to several reports, as people continue to struggle to find money to cover all of their expenses. Insurance provider Insurance.com recently said about 40% of customers who have applied for coverage online had allowed their previous policy to lapse. Two years ago that number was less than 10%.

One person who shouldn’t have that problem is New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress, who makes $7.85 million a year to play football.

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The holidays provide a unique opportunity to give gifts, something I can’t otherwise offer, what with being a journalist and all. So in recognizing this special chance, I offer the following gifts to various insurance and financial service professional interests, wrapped neatly in old issues of Insurance & Financial Advisor (hey, wrapping paper isn’t cheap).

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About six weeks ago, I suggested in this blog that AIG stood for Anything I can Get and that’s exactly what the global insurer has proven. Since that pronouncement, the bankrolling by Uncle Sam has increased from $70 billion to about $125 billion to nearly $150 billion.

AIG could now stand for Ain’t It Grand or AIG Is Greedy. I could go on. You get the point.

AIG did, too. To help rehabilitate its bad name, the company has chosen to rename its aigdirect brand as 21st Century Insurance, an auto insurance firm it bought in 2007 to form aigdirect, according to an article at IFAwebnews.com.

Note how aigdirect is all lowercase to make it as distant as possible from its parent AIG. (That’s good marketing!)

Well, it would seem that its new 21st Century name is just as fitting as AIG. AIG officials have chosen a name for one of its companies that is historic. It captures the essence of this century, one where AIG officials’ actions so far are practically guaranteed to be featured in any business and political history book for years and years to come.

Variable annuities appear to be causing stockholders at insurance companies like Hartford Financial Services, Lincoln National Corp. and Prudential Financial offering these products to develop a case of the jitters, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Shareholders fear the insurers will be forced to sell these products to generate the capital needed to meet regulatory requirements. With market declines, Fitch recently said capital needed to support the variable annuity industry had increased by as much as $15 billion this year.

What remains unclear, according to the article, is how much of a role VAs play in the companies’ financials and how they will manage the risks associated with these products in a new economic climate.

Yet another impact of the sagging economy on the insurance industry.

The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik recently analyzed online life expectancy calculators, based largely on the projections each gave for the life expectancy of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, or, put another way, the chances that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will become president during his term (if he wins election Nov. 4).

The numbers varied by as much as a decade, with 14 years for McCain being the longest projected lifespan for the Arizona senator, who is now 72 years old. Bialik in his Numbers column describes the errors and fallacies of each mainstream life expectancy calculator.
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In these difficult times, where everyone is struggling to make sense and make money in the floundering economy, a little humor in the form of the 20 most unusual names of pets for whom their owners paid insurance is the perfect antidote.

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The fine folks leading American International Group seem to have failed miserably at understanding the financial markets - and now, public sentiment.

This week company officials were rightly taken to task by Congress for holding an expensive retreat in California, to the tune of $440,000, including $23,000 in spa treatments, at a posh resort. AIG officials, with the ink still wet on the $85 billion loan from the government, said the trip was for independent insurance agents for one of its subsidiaries, not its financial service executives. Read the rest of this entry »

So the annual Life Insurance Awareness Month ended with a bang Tuesday with news that actor Heath Ledger’s life insurance company, ReliaStar Life Insurance, is being sued in Los Angeles for not paying $10 million in benefits to his 2-year-old daughter Matilda Rose.

It seems the insurance company thinks the 28-year-old Australian actor found dead in his New York apartment in January may have committed suicide or lied on paperwork, either of which, of course, would mean no payout. Authorities ruled his death accidental from an overdose of painkillers and other medicines.

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