Owners, Landlords and Tenants, and Long-Haul Truck Changes.

Owners, Landlords and Tenants, and Long-Haul Truck Changes.
Reflecting rising costs and the tendency of court verdicts to follow the general rise in living expenses, an average country-wide rate increase of 23 per cent was made in mid-1949 in bodily-injury liability rates for a large number of owners', landlords', and tenants' insurance classifications. Such risks included stores, hotels, restaurants, apartments, tenements, boarding houses, and mercantile and office buildings.
In announcing the increased rates, the casualty-rating bureau pointed out that the cost of settling insurance claims has increased considerably since 1946. Despite that fact, this rate increase was on the conservative side.
It was also necessary in 1949 to make a sizable increase in premium rates for long-haul truckmen — the first countrywide revision since 1940. An exhaustive study of present-day conditions in the long-haul trucking industry pointed to a definite increase in the number of serious and costly claims during the past two years. As a direct result, the rates for increased limits were increased 50 per cent for both bodily injury and property damage.
An encouraging side of the 1949 picture was the trend toward broader policy coverage. One evidence of it was the revised program for insuring garage risks, which became effective late in the year. The result achieved was to provide by means of a single policy coverage which was formerly available only through multiple-policy issuance.
Another evidence of this trend was in the fidelity-surety bond field. Bond coverages were substantially broadened and at no increase in rates. In fact, the price of the services sold by corporate suretyship was one of the very few prices which has not been increased during recent years. On the contrary, bankers blanket-bond rates have dropped about 64 per cent since 1936; individual and schedule bonds have declined 30 to 40 per cent in cost; and primary commercial blanket-bond rates decreased 51.6 per cent to 65.4 per cent for selected coverages. All fidelity bonds as a group have decreased in cost approximately 60 per cent.
Fidelity bond underwriters were concerned over the rising trend in bank embezzlements, and so were member banks of the American Bankers Association. The situation received attention at the 1949 annual meeting of the A. B. A. when its insurance and protective committee chairman pointed to seven large dishonesty losses in the past year, each of which exceeded the bank's blanket bonds and seriously impaired or eliminated capital funds.
To guard against the recurrence of such substantial losses in the future, the recommendation was made for more rigid control of operations, periodic audits of assets and periodic verification of deposits, and the suggestion that the boards of directors of all banks resurvey their surety bond coverage and increase their bond limits, where necessary, up to the 'fair' amount set by the American Bankers Association