FCAS, MAAA, CSPA Director and Consulting Actuary
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California Homeowners Insurance – Availability and Affordability as Wildfires Burn Jan 7, 2021
Pandemic and Apocalyptic Skies – 2020 in the Bay Area Oct 13, 2020
Autonomous Vehicles and the Future of Auto Insurance Mar 27, 2018
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Laura Maxwell is a director and consulting actuary with Pinnacle Actuarial Resources in the firm’s San Francisco, California, office. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Moravian University. She has worked in the property/casualty insurance industry since 1987 and has provided consulting services since 2003.
Laura currently serves the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) as a member of the Casualty Loss Reserve Seminar Planning Committee, E-Forum Committee and syllabus part vice chair of the Syllabus and Examination Committee. She is a member of the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA) Cyber Risk Task Force and a member of the Actuarial Science Advisory Board at the University of the Pacific.
Prior to consulting, she was a product manager for a direct auto insurer and held actuarial positions with a state insurance department and a national rating bureau. Her background includes personal and commercial lines pricing and reserving.
Pinnacle Promotes Laura Maxwell and Jordan Paszek Authored by Laura A. Maxwell and Jordan R. Paszek.
December 17 2020 APEX Webinar Actuarial Standards of Practice: Modeling and Assumptions Authored by Laura A. Maxwell and Kendra Letang and Radost Roumenova Wenman.
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Captive Dividend Assessment
An onshore, single parent captive was concerned with the amount of retained earnings and wanted to establish a policy for the minimum capital for the program to trigger dividend distributions. Pinnacle compared the program’s capitalization to a wide variety of industry standards for similar programs from rating agencies, regulators, and other sources. The results of this analysis lead to a recommended board policy regarding a minimum capital threshold for dividend distributions and ultimately to a significant dividend being declared to the parent company.
Rate Filing Review
Pinnacle typically provides state regulators expert review of company and bureau rate change filings. In a recent review of a Company’s automobile rate filing Pinnacle was able to confirm that the filed rates met the State’s rating laws and Department’s filing requirements. Using a procedure developed by Pinnacle specifically to review rate filings, the Company filing was reviewed against generally accepted actuarial principles. The Company was questioned on certain rating procedures and was able to support their procedures and selections with additional documentation to the filing. Pinnacle was then able to affirm to the Regulator that the filed rates were not excessive, inadequate, nor unfairly discriminatory and that the new rates would not produce any major policyholder dislocations. The Regulator was then able to acknowledge the Company’s filing with confidence that the Regulator had carried out his charge of providing service and protection both to consumers and to the insurance industry.
Workers' Compensation
Pinnacle was retained by a major national political organization to investigate the impact of several workers compensation reforms including: implementation of mandatory managed care, privatization of state workers compensation insurance funds and the permitting of private insurers to enter previously monopolistic workers compensation states. Our analysis looked at state-level differences in rate levels, insurer experience, coverage competition, the mix of medical and indemnity claims and numerous other metrics. The study was extremely well received and ultimately presented to more than half of the nation’s governors.
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September 19, 2021 NAMIC Annual Convention
September 21, 2021 SCCIA Executive Educational Conference