Opportunities expanding for surplus lines insurers

Regulators' current drive to streamline sales of most types of insurance coverage is creating some special challenges and opportunities for the surplus lines marketplace. Those challenges include increased competition and a blurring of the distinction between surplus lines and admitted coverages, especially as more states deregulate commercial insurance. Opportunities may arise, though, from efforts to streamline agent licensing, which surplus lines brokers hope would minimize difficulties that they now encounter on multistate risks. Currently, for example, it is unclear how the a broker should pay premium taxes on business that may be partially located in a state where it is not licensed.