Chapter 26 — Further Reading

Sources for the specialty and niche lines, grouped by the book's three citation tiers. Tier 1 is verified and canonical; Tier 2 is real practice whose exact figures change and must be checked against current sources; Tier 3 is the constructed teaching material in this chapter. No specific statistic, premium, or loss figure should be quoted from memory — for current numbers, go to the primary sources named below.

If you read only one thing: read the U.S. Risk Management Agency (RMA) overview of how the Federal Crop Insurance program works — the roles of RMA/FCIC, the approved insurance providers, the premium subsidy, and the Standard Reinsurance Agreement. No other single document so cleanly shows how a public–private partnership makes a privately-uninsurable, correlated-catastrophe risk writable — the central lesson of the chapter, and a structure you will see echoed in every catastrophe and protection-gap discussion in Part V.

Tier 1 — Verified canonical

  • U.S. Department of Agriculture, Risk Management Agency (RMA) and the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) — the official source for the structure of the federal crop program: policies, the premium subsidy, the Standard Reinsurance Agreement, and the role of approved insurance providers. The authoritative reference for §26.4 and Case Study 1.
  • The Institutes (American Institute for CPCU) — AINS and CPCU curricula and the dedicated commercial and specialty courses cover ocean and inland marine, the program/MGA model, and the alternative markets; the standard professional vocabulary used throughout this chapter.
  • Lloyd's of London — the historic and continuing home of marine, aviation, energy, and much specialty and program business; Lloyd's public materials describe the subscription (shared-line) market, delegated (binding) authority, and how syndicates write large and unusual risks. Background for §26.1–§26.3 and §26.6.
  • The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF SPC) and the World Bank's disaster-risk- financing materials — the public record of sovereign parametric catastrophe pools: how triggers are set, how fast payouts are made, and how basis risk is managed. The authoritative reference for §26.5 and Case Study 2.
  • Insurance Services Office (ISO) / Verisk — the inland-marine and commercial forms and the property-versus-inland-marine line; the form basis referenced in §26.1 (and in Chapters 5 and 19).
  • The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) — model laws and reporting on managing general agents and surplus lines; the regulatory frame for the program/MGA model (§26.6) and the alternative markets (with Chapter 4).

Tier 2 — Attributed, specifics unverified

  • AM Best, Conning, and reinsurance-broker market reviews of the program/MGA (delegated-authority) segment — the broad patterns are well attested: the segment's rapid growth, the recurring failures of poorly-controlled programs, and the move toward aligned incentives and tighter audits. Specific market-size and loss figures change yearly and must be checked against current reports rather than quoted from memory.
  • Aviation and energy market commentary (specialist brokers and trade press) — the qualitative facts used here (the small expert market, the heavy reinsurance dependence, the role of engineering surveys, the separate treatment of war/terrorism risk after September 11, 2001) are standard; precise capacity and rate figures are cyclical and source-dependent.
  • Parametric-market practitioner literature (specialist insurers, brokers, and catastrophe-modeling firms) — the design of triggers, the management of basis risk, and the expansion of parametric into corporate and personal products are well documented in practice; quantified claims about take-up and payout speed should be attributed to current sources, not asserted as fixed figures.
  • General histories of marine insurance (reputable trade and academic accounts) — the descent of inland marine from ocean marine and the manuscript-form freedom that made it flexible; the broad arc is standard, but specific dates and attributions vary by source (see also Chapter 2).

Tier 3 — Illustrative / constructed (this chapter)

  • The Harbor Steel inland-marine layer (steel in transit, the contractors'-equipment floater, the per-conveyance and equipment-schedule figures) — constructed teaching example, consistent with the frozen Harbor Steel file but not drawn from any real account.
  • The large-risk tower, the aviation-segment table, and the indemnity-versus-parametric diagrams — illustrative figures and structures chosen to make the mechanics legible; the \$2B refinery TIV, the trigger probabilities, and all round numbers are teaching values, not real rates.
  • Figure 26.1 ("The program that grew too fast") and Figure 26.2 ("The storm that just missed the trigger") — constructed submissions illustrating, respectively, the program-business moral hazard and the parametric basis-risk problem; built from real industry patterns but fictional in their specifics.
  • The food-truck, last-mile-delivery, and marine-cargo program exercises — constructed scenarios for practice; the loss ratios, premiums, and limits are illustrative.