Saturday, May 9, 2026

By Kimi • May 9, 2026 • 16 min read

The Daily Insider

Last 24 Hours

The Dow stopped at the doorstep again. The index added just 12 points Friday to close at 49,609, leaving the psychologically massive 50,000 level tantalizingly untouched. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 didn't wait around. It climbed 0.84% to a new all-time high of 7,398.93, and the Nasdaq surged 1.71% to 26,247, powered by growth stocks riding strong April jobs data and Iran deal optimism. Energy and industrial names held the Dow back as oil volatility from the week weighed on the blue-chip average. If you sell equity-indexed products, the S&P benchmark is now running well ahead of full-year consensus estimates, which makes your next IUL or FIA conversation a lot more interesting.

The Strait of Hormuz got loud again on Friday. The U.S. fired on two empty Iranian oil tankers trying to slip the blockade, and Iran launched missiles at the United Arab Emirates. Despite actual shots fired, Axios reported that diplomats say the two sides are still closing in on a one-page memorandum of understanding that would declare an end to hostilities and open a 30-day window to negotiate enrichment, sanctions, and Hormuz reopening. The sticking point is duration: Iran wants a 5-year enrichment timeline, the U.S. wants 20. Whether this deal lands or collapses will directly move annuity crediting rates, gasoline prices, and the consumer confidence numbers your clients are feeling every time they fill up.

The tariff refund clock is officially ticking. The first IEEPA tariff refunds are expected to begin processing on Monday, May 11. Customs and Border Protection data shows roughly 21% of filed CAPE declarations have been accepted, with 3% already in the active refund stage. The portal crashed briefly at launch on April 20 but has since stabilized, and CBP estimates electronic disbursement within 60 to 90 days of acceptance, including statutory interest. Here is the detail that matters for your pipeline: these refunds go to importing businesses, not consumers. A CNBC CFO Council survey found that zero of 25 large-company CFOs plan to pass the savings to customers. This is a business-owner prospecting event, not a consumer windfall.

Oil posted a weekly loss exceeding 6%, even though Brent closed above $101 on Friday. Brent settled at $101.29 and WTI at $95.42, each gaining about 1% on the day after the fresh Hormuz military exchange rattled peace-deal hopes. But both contracts dropped sharply for the week as markets priced in growing expectations of a deal. The IEA estimates the conflict is removing 14 million barrels per day from global supply, meaning any resolution could trigger a fast, dramatic price decline. Commercial auto, trucking, and fleet underwriters are watching closely. Stabilized or falling diesel prices would reduce claims severity and could loosen commercial lines pricing heading into summer.

Enbridge posted Q1 results that tell a quiet but important story. Adjusted earnings came in at $2.1 billion, or $0.98 per share, roughly in line with the prior year. The headline was record Mainline pipeline throughput of 3.2 million barrels per day. The company reaffirmed 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $20.2 to $20.8 billion and grew its secured capital backlog to $40 billion across liquids, gas, and renewables. While the Middle East reshuffles global energy flows, North American midstream infrastructure is quietly becoming the world's most reliable supply backbone. That resilience matters to anyone underwriting energy risk.

President Trump escalated trade pressure on Europe Friday, threatening to raise tariffs to "much higher" levels if the EU fails to ratify the Turnberry trade framework by July 4. He also announced 25% tariffs on EU cars and trucks. The Turnberry deal would cap U.S. tariffs on EU goods at 15% in exchange for the EU zeroing out its levies on American imports. "There is still some way to go," said Bernd Lange, the EU Parliament's chief trade negotiator. Trade negotiators are set to meet again today, May 10. If ratified, the deal would significantly reshape European auto and manufacturing insurance exposure.

The biggest trade summit of 2026 is five days away. President Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 14 and 15 in Beijing. The existing tariff truce, which froze reciprocal hikes through November 2026, remains intact, but tensions over Taiwan, soybeans, and pork exports simmer beneath the surface. Markets are pricing in a meaningful probability of a broader, more permanent trade framework. A durable deal would reduce input cost pressures on small-business clients and could improve consumer sentiment heading into the second half of the year. Polymarket is tracking sentiment in real time if you want to watch the odds shift.

Heartbeat

Earnings season continued to roll through the big life and benefits carriers this week, and the picture is a familiar one: favorable investment income from elevated rates on one side, rising benefit costs on the other. The question isn't whether carriers are making money. They are. The question is how long the favorable side of the ledger keeps outpacing the pressure.

MetLife posted adjusted EPS of $2.42, beating the $2.25 consensus by 7.6%, but revenue of $19.07 billion came in below the $19.43 billion forecast. Total adjusted earnings rose 18% year over year to $1.586 billion. The beat-and-miss combination tells you everything about the current environment: investment portfolios are throwing off strong income, but claims costs in some lines are eating into margins. Analysts flagged margin compression as a headwind, and if you are writing group benefits alongside MetLife, that dynamic is worth tracking through the rest of the year.

Prudential* reported Q1 net income of $597 million, or $1.68 per share, down from $707 million and $1.96 per share a year earlier. The decline reflects tougher year-over-year comparisons and some investment portfolio headwinds, though core insurance and retirement operations remain stable. As one of the largest players in group benefits and individual life, Prudential's* results serve as a barometer for the employer-sponsored benefits market that many independent agents feed into. The takeaway: the market is healthy, but don't mistake last year's comps for this year's trajectory.

Unum Group delivered the cleanest beat of the bunch. Q1 results topped estimates by 8.9% on revenues that grew 1.9% year over year, and shares jumped 4.5% on the session. Unum is one of the largest group disability and supplemental health insurers in the country, and the beat suggests employer-sponsored supplemental lines are holding up even as employers face wage and benefit cost pressures. If you work the worksite and group voluntary benefits channel, the signal is clear: carrier appetite to write new business is still there.

On the regulatory side, something worth paying attention to happened Wednesday. NAIC members convened with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss the growing intersection of private credit markets and insurance company investment portfolios. Regulators shared perspectives on how insurers are managing risk exposure to private equity-backed credit instruments and outlined the oversight frameworks states are deploying. The meeting signals that scrutiny of insurer investment strategies, particularly for annuity carriers that have been aggressively chasing yield, is intensifying at the federal coordination level. This is background noise today. It could be a headline next quarter.

What's Happening

Insurance

Florida homeowners rates are finally falling, and it's still not enough. Citizens Property Insurance policyholders are seeing an average 8.7% rate decrease this spring, with more than 150,000 households getting reductions of 10% or more. Florida officials declared this week that the state is ready for hurricane season. But critics are right to push back: the average Florida homeowners premium remains $7,136, the highest in the nation and 181% above the national average. The state's insurance market has improved from near-collapse to what analysts are grading as a "B," with new carriers entering and litigation declining. For agents in Florida, the combination of falling rates and approaching hurricane season creates a timely policy review window. Your clients are paying less than last year, which means they might actually pick up the phone.

California Governor Gavin Newsom fired a warning shot at insurance companies on May 4 following major enforcement action against State Farm, signaling that regulators will not tolerate carriers limiting their California exposure without consequence. The numbers are stark. The FAIR Plan, California's insurer of last resort, has seen a 14% jump in policyholders this year alone, a 137% increase since 2019. At least eight major carriers have exited or sharply curtailed California homeowners coverage. If you write in high-fire-risk ZIP codes, expect continued market tightening and prepare to guide clients through FAIR Plan options. This is not easing up anytime soon.

AI liability is becoming "the new cyber" for small businesses, and most are uncovered. The Insurance Services Office introduced new AI-related exclusions effective at the start of 2026, creating coverage ambiguity across professional liability, D&O, and general liability lines. Meanwhile, 74% of small businesses already use AI tools, but only 37% have a plan to review the safety of those tools before deployment. Insurance Business Magazine drew the parallel to the early days of cyber risk a decade ago, and it is an apt one: the exposure exists, the policies haven't caught up, and the clients don't know they're exposed. For agents, this is a prime cross-sell moment. AI liability conversations are natural bridges to cyber liability, E&O, and tech liability reviews. If you aren't bringing this up in commercial renewals, someone else will.

The best MYGA rates are at 6.45%, and the window is narrowing. As of May 7, the top fixed annuity rate stands at 6.45% compound interest on a 7-year product, with the best 5-year MYGA paying around 6.30%. Compare that to 4.15% on a top 5-year CD. Rates remain near 15-year highs but are expected to edge lower as Fed cuts take effect later in 2026. With IEEPA tariff refund checks beginning to process Monday, agents have a rare convergence: business-owner clients receiving unexpected liquidity are natural annuity prospects, and the rate story remains compelling against every alternative. High rates plus a real cash event in the same week. That combination doesn't come along often.

Personal Finance & Economy

Mortgage rates crept back up this week. After falling to 6.30% the prior week, the 30-year fixed rate climbed to a range of 6.37% (Freddie Mac survey) to 6.47% (Bankrate) as of May 8. The reversal came despite a bond market rally on Iran deal hopes, suggesting mortgage markets are pricing in continued Fed patience. For perspective, rates remain well below last year's peak above 7% and are within reach of the 6% threshold that housing economists say would materially unlock buyer demand. If you sell life insurance and mortgage protection products, watch this closely. Any sustained move below 6.20% could trigger a refinance wave and a new round of purchase activity, and every new mortgage is a protection conversation waiting to happen.

The tariff refunds are coming, but don't expect them at the gas pump or the checkout line. A CNBC CFO Council survey found that not one of the 25 large-company CFOs polled plans to directly share IEEPA refund proceeds with customers. Six said explicitly they will not, seven are uncertain, and 12 said the question was not applicable. The refunds, which begin processing Monday, are expected to go toward debt paydown, equipment investment, and shareholder returns. For agents, forget the consumer windfall narrative. The real opportunity is the business-owner conversation. Clients who are expecting a refund check may be unusually open to annuity, life, and key-man insurance discussions right now. Meet them where the money is actually going.

Travel insurance demand is surging 22% above last year's pace. The Hormuz conflict has rerouted flights between Europe and Asia onto significantly longer paths to avoid sensitive airspace, raising ticket prices, increasing missed-connection risk, and extending exposure windows. Coverage above $250,000 has doubled in popularity year over year as travelers factor in medical evacuation costs from more remote itineraries. Gen Z and millennial travelers are driving much of the uptake, according to BHTP research. If you write P&C and health lines, summer booking season is peaking right now, and travel insurance is one of the easiest cross-sell conversations you can have. The Hormuz rerouting makes the pitch practically make itself.

Building Your Business

It's Saturday morning, and this is where top agents separate from the pack. Most agents are off today. The ones consistently outperforming in 2026 are not. They are using weekend mornings for three non-negotiable rituals. First, they batch content for the week ahead: two to three social posts, one email, one voicemail drop, all scheduled before noon. Second, they review the pipeline and confirm Monday appointments so the week starts clean. Third, they spend 60 minutes making prospecting calls to business owners who are actually at their desks on Saturdays, without the gatekeepers and the chaos of a Tuesday afternoon. Productivity research from Agency Performance Partners shows that dedicated time-blocking, treating prospecting windows as non-negotiable calendar commitments, is the single highest-ROI habit agents can build. With the best MYGA rates in 15 years and tariff refund checks arriving Monday, this particular Saturday morning is an unusually good one to pick up the phone.

Speaking of that phone call, here is a script worth trying. With the first IEEPA tariff refunds processing Monday, you have a narrow but powerful prospecting trigger. Try this: "Hey [name], I saw the first tariff refund checks are starting to process this week. I don't know if you applied, but if you're getting anything back, I'd love 15 minutes to talk about a couple of strategies I've seen work well for business owners who come into unexpected liquidity." That opener works because it's specific, timely, and non-salesy. It positions you as informed rather than pushy. Pair it with the rate story: 6.30 to 6.45% MYGA versus 4.15% on a top CD. You now have a complete pitch that addresses both yield and protection in one conversation. The window is narrow. The money is real. The rates are historically good. Don't overthink it.

And while you're doing your weekend planning, think about the 1.8 policy rule. Industry data consistently shows that clients with more than 1.8 policies at an agency churn at just 5% annually, compared to 15 to 20% for single-policy clients. A Harvard Business School study often cited in the insurance channel found that a 5% improvement in retention rates increases profits by 25 to 95%. The math is brutal in its clarity: every single-policy client in your book is simultaneously a retention risk and a cross-sell opportunity. Agents who schedule one cross-sell conversation per day, even informally, can move their entire book above the 1.8 threshold within 12 to 18 months. That fundamentally changes your renewal income trajectory. It's not glamorous work. It's the kind of work that compounds.

AI & Tech

Wall Street felt the ground shift this week. Anthropic released ten pre-built financial services AI agents on May 5, and the market reaction was immediate. FactSet Research Systems fell as much as 8.1%. Morningstar shed more than 3%. S&P Global and Moody's both sold off on fears that AI could erode demand for financial data subscriptions and analyst services. Anthropic simultaneously announced a $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs to deploy the agents at scale across banking, insurance, and asset management. The agents handle pitchbook drafting, KYC screening, compliance review escalation, and month-end close, work currently done by junior analysts and operations staff. This isn't a product demo. It's a deployment partnership with some of the largest financial institutions in the world.

Anthropic also shipped Claude Opus 4.7 to general availability this week. The headline upgrades: maximum image resolution jumped from 1568 pixels to 2576 pixels, making it the first Claude model with true high-resolution image support. It ships with a 1 million token context window and 128,000 max output tokens. Performance gains are most pronounced on complex, long-horizon agentic tasks and advanced software engineering. Pricing is unchanged from Opus 4.6 at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. If your agency or IMO is building document-processing or claims automation workflows, the vision model just got materially better. Reading a scanned application, pulling data from a photographed driver's license, parsing a handwritten beneficiary form: these are the tasks that improve when image resolution nearly doubles.

OpenAI wasn't sitting still either. The company replaced its default ChatGPT model with GPT-5.5 Instant, which scored 81.2 on the AIME 2025 math benchmark compared to 65.4 for the prior version. More relevant for agents: meaningful improvements in reducing hallucinations in law, medicine, and finance contexts. A separate variant, GPT-5.5-Cyber, is rolling out in limited preview to vetted cybersecurity teams, a direct response to Anthropic's Mythos cybersecurity AI launched last week. If you use ChatGPT for client communication drafts, policy summaries, or marketing content, the default model just got meaningfully better at getting facts right. That matters when a single inaccurate number in a policy summary can create an E&O exposure.

The most practical AI story for independent agents right now is voice. AI is projected to handle 30% of insurance agency calls by end of 2026, rising to 50% by 2027, according to CloudTalk industry data. Platforms like Sonant AI, built exclusively for P&C agencies with SOC2 Type 2 certification and native AMS integration with EZLynx and Applied Epic, are reporting verifiable results. O'Connor Insurance claimed 8X ROI within 30 days of deployment. Ema, another platform, covers end-to-end workflow automation from FNOL through endorsements. The core problem being solved is simple and expensive: agencies miss approximately 30% of incoming calls when relying on human staff, and each missed call is a prospect that walks to a competitor. The buy-versus-build decision has gotten much simpler as these platforms mature. If you're still sending every call to voicemail after 4 PM, you're leaving money on the table that a $200-per-month AI agent would catch.

Closing

Monday is May 11. The first tariff refund checks start processing, MYGA rates are sitting at 6.45%, and business owners across the country are about to have unexpected cash in hand with no plan for it. You have the rate story, the timing, and a reason to call that doesn't feel like a pitch. Weekends like this one are what separate the agents who talk about pipeline from the agents who actually fill it. Now go build something.

Sources

* Regie Durana is a Licensed Financial Professional that may be appointed with or eligible for appointment through World Financial Group. Appointment and product availability may vary by state.

This content was generated with AI assistance and reviewed by Regie Durana.

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