California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, saying there is plenty of room for private insurers to cut costs, angrily rejected an industry request for a big hike in workers' compensation rates.

The major data group for the workers' compensation insurance industry said preliminary figures show claim frequency fell 4 percent in 2008 and is likely to decline again this year.

New York's top insurance regulator announced he will delay setting new medical malpractice insurance rates, unchanged since 2007, until the state Senate political stalemate ends.

Companies in the United Kingdom--particularly those whose shares are traded in the U.S.--are buying huge amounts of insurance coverage for directors and officers as increasing numbers of class actions target their management.

A longtime Allstate agent and veteran of the Florida House of Representatives has announced his candidacy for Florida chief financial officer in a race likely to see some focus on the state's fractured insurance market.

Reinsurer Guy Carpenter & Company, LLC, said it has named Richard Booth as vice chairman and Henry Keeling to the newly created position of president and chief executive officer of international operations.

Responding to the California insurance commissioner's announcement of a "Terrorism Financing Probe" of insurers, an insurance trade group said his actions could interfere with federal oversight.

The $3.5 billion stock merger deal announced yesterday between consulting giants Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby Inc. and Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. was followed by a drop in Watson Wyatt stock price today.