One Los Angeles business owner faces dozens of counts of insurance fraud after underreporting his company’s payroll.

The overall composite rate for U.S. property and casualty in April was down 4 percent, unchanged from the previous month, according to Dallas-based MarketScouts latest Market Barometer.

Catastrophe-risk modeler EQECAT has dramatically changed its estimate of insured losses from the Tohoku, Japan earthquake to between $22 billion and $39 billion.

Natural catastrophes took a toll on Munich Re’s first-quarter earnings as the company reports a net loss of €948 million (U.S. $1.36 billion at current exchange rate) compared to net income of €485 million ($695 million) for the same period last year.

Storms in April, mostly throughout the U.S. Southeast, are expected to cause insured losses of around $4 billion—possibly as high as $5.5 billion, according to recent estimates.

An article in The New York Times comparing captive insurance to “the shadow banking system” has Vermont’s captive regulator puzzled and frustrated—because while some of the observations are spot on, they don’t add up to a fair representation of the captive industry, he says.

Two bond insurers reported first-quarter losses, with one of the companies, Ambac Financial Group, saying that it may have to liquidate pursuant to Chapter 7 if its reorganization plans are not successful.

American International Group Inc. (AIG) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury say they plan to offer a small portion of stock for an unset price in an effort to better understand the underlying value of the bailed-out insurer.