Good Morning. Welcome to this week’s recap. The news, trends, and Top Producer insights you actually want to read. Grab a fresh cup of coffee and let’s get started.

Grab your popcorn. Howden is back, and Season 2 is already getting juicy.

USI's national aviation practice leader James Van Meter walked out last week and headed straight for Howden US. He didn't go alone. He brought ten people with him, including full teams from Atlanta and Miami. Discussions “allegedly” started in January. The group “allegedly” timed their resignations to USI's annual bonus day, collected their checks, and dipped.

Classic Howden. But if you're new here, let's do a quick Season 1 recap.

Previously on REOB: It started with a failed acquisition. Howden tried to buy Risk Strategies for roughly $10 billion. When that fell through, Marsh alleged Howden hatched a new plan: skip the hard part of building a US presence and just take Marsh's instead.

Enter Mike Parrish: Marsh's Florida zone leader, future CEO of Howden US, and last season's undisputed main character. Marsh alleged four executives engineered a "methodical raid" that triggered the near-simultaneous departure of more than 100 employees. Parrish's response? Join Howden anyway. Marsh's response? Sue him. A judge granted the injunction. The season was just getting started.

By fall, Aon alleged one of their managing directors shipped boxes of confidential documents to his home before resigning alongside six direct reports on the same day. Aon called it "just the tip of the iceberg." Judges agreed. Both Aon and Marsh secured preliminary injunctions.

Then came a very red Christmas. On December 18th, Brown & Brown watched approximately 200 employees resign across four offices in perfectly coordinated fashion, no notice, all landing at Howden effective the next morning. It unfolded over 48 hours. Right before the holidays. Jim Hays, the literal founder of the Hays Companies division that Brown & Brown acquired in their biggest deal in 75 years, became Vice Chairman at Howden overnight.

You genuinely cannot make this up.

Brown & Brown's CEO went on an earnings call and refused to say Howden's name, referring to them only as "the start-up." Sick burn.

Then Alliant, themselves no strangers to a poaching lawsuit, joined the pile-on in January, alleging Howden's departing energy brokers accessed, renamed, deleted, and screenshotted hundreds of client files on the way out before allegedly spreading rumors that Alliant's energy team had collapsed to accelerate client defections.

We don't have a dog in this fight. We're just here for the drama and popcorn.

Season 2 is looking very promising.

Sources: The Insurer / Insurance Journal / Business Insurance

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​OSHA quietly launched something actually useful this month. Their new Safety Champions Program is a free, voluntary, self-guided framework designed to help employers build effective safety and health programs from wherever they currently stand.

The program runs three tiers: introductory, intermediate, and advanced. Letting employers develop at their own pace, with optional guidance from Special Government Employees who can assess progress along the way. The seven core elements include management leadership, hazard identification, worker participation, and training.

No enforcement or penalties. Just a value add.

P&C Pros, this is a free client touchpoint gift-wrapped by the federal government. Forwarding this to your mid-market manufacturing, construction, and staffing clients with a note costs you fifteen minutes and positions you as the producer paying attention.

Sources: U.S. Department of Labor / OSHA

Quick recap: The Supreme Court ruled in February that Trump's use of emergency powers to impose tariffs was unlawful. That triggered a flood of importers demanding their money back. The government collected roughly $166 billion in contested duties, and companies want it returned with interest.

Nearly 1,000 new lawsuits were filed in US trade court since March 1. That’s about a third of the 3,000-plus tariff cases brought over the past year. The plaintiff list reads like a luxury mall directory: Versace, Adidas, Ducati, DHL, Alaska Airlines, and Hawaiian Airlines insurancejournal are among the latest filers.

So why sue if the government is building a refund portal? Because nobody trusts the refund portal. As of March 12, the portal was reportedly about 70% complete and trade lawyers say it still isn't clear which tariff payments will actually be covered, or whether the government will contest the judge's authority to mandate repayments in the first place.

Import-heavy insureds like manufacturing, wholesale distribution, retail, etc, are navigating real financial uncertainty right now. This is also a legitimate D&O exposure for publicly traded clients whose boards are making calls on whether to sue or not.

Sources: Bloomberg / Insurance Journal

Anthropic, yes, the company that makes the AI, published a report this month on AI's actual impact on the labor market.

The headline is surprisingly chill: the analysis found limited evidence that AI has affected employment to date.

Here's the more interesting part. Theoretical AI coverage exceeds 80% in business and finance, management, legal, and office administration. But actual observed adoption is a fraction of that. The gap between what AI could do and what it's actually doing is enormous. For now.

The early warning signal worth watching: hiring of younger workers has slowed in occupations with higher AI exposure, and BLS projections show those same occupations growing more slowly through 2034. Workers in the most exposed professions are more likely to be older, female, more educated, and higher paid. In other words, this isn't hitting the warehouse. It's heading for the corner office.

So what for producers? New workforce restructuring questions on the horizon, benefits design for a shrinking white-collar headcount, employment practices liability as AI-influenced hiring decisions get scrutinized, and workers' comp exposure shifting as job categories change. Be ready.

Sources: CBS News / HR Dive

Insurers have been complaining about AI-driven hospital overbilling for a while. Last week, BCBS published the first data to actually back it up.

Their analytics arm, Blue Health Intelligence, analyzed commercial claims and found hospitals' AI-powered upcoding drove a 1.8% increase in commercial plan claims between 2023 and 2024 undefined, and an estimated $2.3 billion in increased spending over a three-year period, including $663 million in inpatient costs and at least $1.67 billion in outpatient costs.

The mechanism: hospitals using AI ambient listening tools, which record physician conversations and automatically assign billing codes, showed sharp spikes in patients coded with complex conditions far beyond what the care delivered would suggest.

Hospitals say it's just better documentation. BCBS says it's a $2.3 billion problem.

Sources: Blue Cross Blue Shield Association / BenefitsPro

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In this episode, Trey talks with Justin Tatum, a top P&C producer and agency owner. He shares how he grew a multi-million dollar book at a top shop, the lessons learned leading their producer training program, to his new venture building a Producer-first agency.

In this episode, Trey sits down with Jeb Blazevich. From being the #1 TE recruit in the country, to making partner at Sterling Seacrest Pritchard in record time, Jeb is an absolute stud. During their discussion Jeb reveals why selling "product" kills long-term retention, his "faithful not fruitful" mindset shift, how to turn a "no" into a "yes", and much more.

Today's email was written by Trey Shields

Edited by Moe Coffee and Philip McCupp

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