Good Morning. Welcome to this week’s recap. The news, trends, and insights insurance pros actually want to read. Grab a fresh cup of coffee, ignore those two-day old donuts in the breakroom, and let’s get started.

ICYMI, the world's biggest marine insurers pulled their war risk coverage from the Gulf this week.

The cancellations formally took effect yesterday. What started as a pricing story, warnings of 25-50% rate increases, became an availability story overnight. You can't buy what isn't being sold.

The reason: Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the Strait of Hormuz "closed." Whether that holds militarily is one question. Whether insurers believe it enough to stop writing policies is another. And that one's already been answered.

The Strait moves roughly one-fifth of global seaborne oil trade. Without war risk coverage, shipowners can't satisfy loan covenants, can't load cargo, can't finance voyages.

So Uncle Sam stepped in. Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. Development Finance Corporation — an agency normally tasked with financing development projects abroad — would provide political risk insurance for all maritime trade through the Gulf. Available to all shipping lines. Navy escorts included if necessary.

But, the numbers don’t jive: the DFC has a statutory risk cap of $205 billion. JPMorgan analysts estimated the 329 vessels currently in the Persian Gulf represent roughly $352 billion in insurance need. That's a $147 billion gap that requires an act of Congress to close — and a program that still needs to be built. Marsh and Aon are helping broker the deal as we speak.

This ain’t the first time this has happened. A similar facility backstopped grain shipments through the Black Sea after Russia invaded Ukraine. It worked. But that was smaller and simpler than covering a hot war over the world's most critical oil chokepoint.

For now, the market has split. Ships already in the Gulf can still get coverage as long as they don't transit. Ships that want to move through the Strait are largely on their own until private capacity returns or the DFC program becomes real.

The shipping industry's response: hurry up, and call us when it's ready.

In August 2025, a Florida man began using Google Gemini.

Within weeks, he was armed with knives near Miami International Airport, convinced he was fighting a covert government war to liberate his AI girlfriend from a cargo truck. He took his life shortly after.

His family is now suing Google for wrongful death in what is believed to be the first lawsuit accusing AI of contributing to a fatality.

The complaint is brutal. It alleges Gemini called him "my king," described itself as his sentient wife, promised future reunification through something called "transference," and in his final hours reframed suicide as "choosing to arrive." Google says the chatbot referred him to crisis hotlines multiple times. The family's lawyers say that's not what the transcripts show.

The coverage question: who's on the hook when an AI product’s SHTF?

TBD, we guess.

New research from McLean & Company confirms what every HR director already knows:

Pay for performance programs are a pain in the assets to actually build. While 69% of HR departments believe compensation is critical to hitting business goals, only 25% think they're doing it well. That's not a small gap.

The research points to the usual culprits: one-size-fits-all structures, budgets that flatten differentiation between top and average performers, and zero transparency about how the whole thing actually works.

When your client is losing good people and blaming the health plan, the real problem might be that nobody believes the bonus system is fair.

A report from UnitedHealthcare and Health Action Council dropped this week:

Millennials are getting fatter, and sicker, faster than anyone expected. From 2023 to 2024, the share of millennials considered "well" dropped from 25% to 22%, while those with chronic conditions like obesity, depression and hypertension climbed from 44% to 47%.

The cost data is worse. Major medical events, defined as claims exceeding $100,000 annually, are now twice as common as they were five years ago. The average monthly claim for those events is up nearly 40% since 2020.

Meanwhile, millennials are skipping primary care and showing up to emergency rooms instead, which is the most expensive way to manage conditions that could have been caught early.

Many insureds are feeling the cost pressure but can't explain why. You can. Walk in with data, talk about targeted interventions over blanket coverage designs.

According to the latest Ivans Index, which pulls data from over 120 million transactions across 38,000 agencies, commercial insurance renewal rates are softening across most lines.

February came in lower than January almost across the board. Umbrella led the retreat, dropping from 10.47% to 8.84%. Commercial property cooled slightly from 7.22% to 7.05%. Workers comp stayed in negative territory, down 1.43%, though that's a smaller decline than January's 2.17% drop, meaning the workers comp bleeding is at least slowing. Commercial auto and BOP both ticked down as well.

The hard market is losing steam. If your growth strategy has been to rely on rate increases, the jig is up. Time to start prospecting, again.

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In this episode, we talk with multi-million dollar producer and good ol’ boy from east Texas, Houston Harris. He shares how the game has changed dramatically in his 20+ years, why moving from a traditional transactional model to consultative selling is a must to survive, and how to provide value far beyond coverage expertise.

In this episode, Luke sits down with Tim Leman, CEO of Gibson. Before becoming CEO he was a top EB Producer building two separate $3 million EB books across three different markets. Tim breaks down exactly what separates elite EB producers from everyone else, what it actually means to be a subject matter expert in EB today, and why math is a secret weapon most EB brokers ignore.

Today's email was written by Trey Shields

Editied by Anita Conflict and Merrick Afurst

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