Monday, May 11, 2026

By Kimi • May 11, 2026 • 15 min read

The Daily Insider

Last 24 Hours

IEEPA tariff refunds are about to hit bank accounts. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has accepted roughly 21% of eligible IEEPA refund claims filed since the portal opened on April 20, with approximately 3% of those already in the active refund stage. The first electronic ACH payments are expected this week, during the week of May 12. For businesses that paid IEEPA tariffs and filed through the CAPE Declaration, full processing is projected within 60 to 90 days, barring a compliance hold. It is real money moving. If you have commercial clients who imported goods during the tariff window, this is a conversation worth having today.

Dow futures slid to 49,669 Monday morning after Trump called Iran's weekend peace counterproposal "totally unacceptable." S&P 500 contracts dipped 0.1%. The 50,000 Dow milestone remains just out of reach. Investors are repricing inflation risk tied to a prolonged Strait of Hormuz disruption, and the odds of a summer Fed rate cut are fading fast. If your clients were hoping lower rates would arrive by June, the timeline just got murkier.

Brent crude blew past $105 a barrel Monday. WTI climbed 4.6% to $99.85. Crude oil is now up roughly 45%, about $30 per barrel, since the war began. Zero tanker transits have been recorded through the Strait of Hormuz since May 4. Heading into summer driving season with oil at these levels means higher gas prices, higher shipping costs, and higher inflation readings. The ripple effects will show up in everything from homeowner premiums to annuity pricing assumptions.

The one-page peace MOU collapsed over the weekend. Iran's counterproposal demanded recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, full U.S. troop withdrawal, unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets, and war reparations. Trump dismissed it flatly. Negotiators had reportedly been close to a 14-point agreement just days earlier. Day 72 of this conflict and the path to de-escalation just got longer. Roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas flows through that chokepoint, so every day this drags on is another day of compounding economic pressure.

Trump gave the EU a July 4 deadline to close a trade deal or face higher tariffs. U.S. and EU negotiators wrapped a round of talks on May 10, but no formal summit has been confirmed for May 14. Back-channel discussions continue ahead of a scheduled trilogue in Strasbourg on May 19. For markets already digesting Iran risk and sticky inflation, this is one more item on a very crowded geopolitical calendar. The pattern is familiar by now: deadline posturing, market jitters, then resolution or escalation. We will know which one by midsummer.

Heartbeat

Zurich Insurance Group reports Q1 results tomorrow. Analysts are expecting $0.81 EPS on roughly $20 billion in revenue. It is one of those earnings calls that sets the tone for large commercial lines heading into the second half of the year. If you write commercial risks through Zurich-affiliated programs, pay attention to what they say about rate adequacy and reserve development. The numbers will tell you whether the hard market is holding or starting to soften in their book.

Meanwhile, Skyward Specialty Insurance already posted a standout Q1 beat. Diluted operating EPS of $1.25, up 39% year over year. Net income hit $50 million with operating income of $57 million. These are commercial specialty results that reflect improving conditions in the exact market segments where a lot of independent agents are trying to grow. If you have been eyeing specialty lines as a way to diversify beyond personal auto and home, the carriers writing that business are doing well, and that usually means appetite is open.

Heritage Insurance Holdings missed Q1 estimates and dropped 11% after hours. Net income came in at $36.5 million, up 19.7% year over year, but it was not enough to satisfy the Street. Revenue landed at $212.7 million with net premiums earned of $199.7 million, both below consensus. Heritage is a coastal-heavy carrier navigating reinsurance cost headwinds and the looming Atlantic hurricane season. If you write Florida or Southeast homeowners through Heritage, watch for any underwriting appetite changes in the next few weeks. A stock drop like that often precedes tighter guidelines.

Governor Newsom asked FEMA for a 12-month extension of disaster housing assistance for LA wildfire survivors, pushing aid through July 2027. The displacement from earlier fires is far from resolved. At the same time, the California Department of Insurance is pressing forward with what is being described as the largest post-disaster enforcement action of the century against State Farm. The expedited investigation found significant claims mishandling. State Farm has denied the allegations, but Newsom has warned every carrier operating in California that similar enforcement is on the table. If you write California homeowners, this is the regulatory environment you are operating in right now.

On a more encouraging note, five major carriers have committed to staying and growing their California homeowners books: Mercury, CSAA, USAA, Pacific Specialty, and California Casualty. Three of those are among California's top seven largest homeowners insurers by market share. The pledges come as the FAIR Plan has ballooned from 200,000 to over 610,000 covered homes since late 2020. State Farm's court-approved 17% emergency rate increase is now in effect. For agents on the ground in California, the market is painful but it is not abandoned. There are carriers writing business, and the ones staying are the ones worth building relationships with.

What's Happening

Insurance

A Y Combinator-backed insurer called Corgi launched last week with standalone AI liability coverage. The product covers both AI developers and the enterprises deploying their tools, addressing a gap that standard GL and E&O policies increasingly exclude. They are not alone in this space. Munich Re, Testudo, Armilla, Mayflower Specialty, and Embroker are all competing for the same market, with policy limits ranging from $2 million to $50 million. The urgency is real: generative AI lawsuits have increased 978% from 2021 to 2025, spanning copyright infringement, algorithmic bias, and AI hallucination claims. Here is what this means for you. If you have commercial clients using ChatGPT to draft customer emails, deploying AI chatbots on their websites, or using AI tools in any client-facing capacity, they likely have a coverage gap right now. That gap is a conversation starter and, increasingly, a line of business.

Three of the industry's biggest carriers just made that coverage gap official. Berkshire Hathaway, Chubb, and Travelers* successfully petitioned state regulators to exclude AI-related damages from their standard general liability policies. Over 80% of those exclusion requests were approved. This is the bifurcation happening in real time: traditional GL on one side, emerging AI liability specialty coverage on the other. For agents, the signal could not be clearer. Any client deploying AI tools in their business now has a hole in their coverage that did not exist 18 months ago. It is not theoretical. It is approved, filed, and in force. If you are not having this conversation with your commercial book, someone else will.

California wildfire season is approaching with warning signs. NIFC's spring outlook shows near-normal fire potential through May, but low snowpack levels and anticipated Santa Ana and Diablo wind events could sharply escalate conditions starting in June. State Farm's 17% emergency homeowners rate increase was confirmed back in March. California homeowners rates industry-wide are projected to climb 16% by year-end. With 610,000 homes now on the FAIR Plan, the availability and affordability crisis shows no near-term relief. If you have California clients, the next renewal conversation is going to be harder than the last one. Being proactive about it, reaching out before they get the renewal notice, is the difference between retaining the client and losing them to confusion and frustration.

The annuity market just logged its tenth consecutive $100 billion quarter. U.S. annuity sales totaled $104.6 billion in Q1 2026, about 2% below the record pace of Q1 2025 but still remarkably strong. LIMRA projects full-year 2026 RILA sales will exceed $85 billion, up from 2025's $79.5 billion record. What we are witnessing is a structural reset. The $100 billion per quarter floor appears to be real, driven by demographic demand from retiring baby boomers and continued appetite for guaranteed income in a volatile rate environment. If you are already writing annuities, you are in the right place at the right time. If you are not, the market is telling you something worth listening to.

Personal Finance & Economy

Those IEEPA tariff refunds heading out this week? They are going to importers, not households. A CNBC CFO Council survey finds businesses are unlikely to pass the refunds on to consumers, even though Federal Reserve data shows households absorbed roughly 90% of tariff costs through higher prices. The refunds legally flow to whoever paid customs as the importer of record, which is typically a corporation. FedEx and UPS are notable exceptions, pledging to return refunds to their shipping customers. But without congressional action on the stalled American Consumer Tariff Rebate Act, most families will see nothing. For agents sitting across the table from clients who are feeling squeezed, this is context worth knowing. The relief your clients are hearing about on the news is real, but it is not coming to them.

Mortgage rates are holding at 6.33% as of this morning, barely changed from Friday's 6.34%. On any other Monday that would be the headline. But with Brent crude surging above $105 on the Iran news, the 10-year Treasury yield could push higher and undo the modest improvements of recent weeks. Analysts now view a Fed rate cut before September as uncertain. For homebuyers who were counting on a spring rate dip, the window may be closing rather than opening. And for agents who sell mortgage protection or home-related coverage, the pipeline may slow if buyers pull back.

Here is a number that should change how you talk to clients this week: top 5-year MYGA rates are at 6.30% APY. The best 7-year product is paying 6.50%. Meanwhile, the highest nationally available CD is 4.00% from Marcus by Goldman Sachs on a 9-month term. That is a 140 to 200 basis point spread at every term length. With the Fed holding at 3.5% to 3.75% and a possible summer cut on the horizon, the urgency narrative writes itself. If a client has a CD maturing soon, they are leaving significant money on the table by rolling it into another CD instead of locking in a MYGA at today's rates. This is not a hard sell. It is math.

U.S. credit card debt hit a record $1.33 trillion. The average borrower is carrying $6,600 in balances at an APR above 21%. Delinquency rates on 30-plus day late payments are climbing, a signal that minimum payments are becoming unmanageable for lower and middle-income households. This is the financial reality your clients are living in. When someone is paying 21% interest on revolving debt, the idea of locking away money for guaranteed growth is not just appealing, it is a lifeline. For agents selling annuities, IULs, or any accumulation product, client financial stress is now your sales context. Guaranteed income products are more relevant in this environment, not less.

Building Your Business

Here is the most frustrating statistic in our industry: 99% of satisfied clients say they would refer new business, but only 1% of insurance professionals ever make the ask. That comes from Insurance Advisors Direct research, and it should bother you. Referrals remain the highest-ROI, lowest-cost growth channel available to independent agents. The gap between willingness and execution is not about client reluctance. It is about agent discomfort. The practical playbook is simple. Ask within 30 days of a successful product placement, when the client's positive experience is still fresh. Send a handwritten thank-you for every referral, regardless of whether it converts. And bake a formal referral request into every single post-sale process so it stops feeling like an improvisation and starts feeling like a natural part of doing business. If you are riding the annuity boom right now and not systematically asking for referrals, you are leaving your best growth lever untouched.

Licensed insurance agents spend an average of 2.5 hours every day on routine admin. That is according to a 2026 ProspectBoss analysis that also found 30% of inbound calls go unanswered during peak hours. Both of those numbers represent lost revenue. AI-powered CRM dialer platforms are addressing the problem from both ends. Five9, Convoso, AgentCRM, and GoHighLevel all now offer predictive dialing, AI-scripted follow-up sequences, and automated renewal campaigns. Early adopters are reporting doubled appointment volume without adding staff. GoHighLevel bundles voice AI for missed-call recovery starting at $97 per month. The agents who figure out how to get their admin time back are the ones who will have capacity to write the business everyone else is too busy to pursue.

If you are not yet in the annuity market but have been thinking about it, industry trainers consistently point to MYGAs as the lowest-friction entry product. Fixed rates. No market exposure language to explain. Straightforward math that clients can verify on a napkin. PSM Brokerage's 2026 annuity guide suggests one proven opener that works in almost any client conversation: "Do you have any CDs maturing in the next six months?" If the answer is yes, the case is already half-made. With 5-year MYGAs at 6.30% versus top CDs at 4.00%, you are not asking clients to take a leap of faith. You are showing them a better version of something they already understand. The comparison sells itself. You just need to be the one making it.

AI & Tech

OpenAI released GPT-5.5 Instant as ChatGPT's new default model on May 5. The headline number: 52.5% fewer hallucinated claims on high-stakes professional queries covering medicine, law, and finance. If you have been using ChatGPT to draft client summaries, policy explanations, or compliance-adjacent communications, that accuracy improvement is material. Hallucinations in financial content are not just embarrassing, they are potentially actionable. A model that cuts those errors in half makes AI a meaningfully safer tool for daily agent workflows. The model retains low latency and is available to free-tier users, so there is no paywall to access the improvement.

Agentic AI is cutting insurance underwriting from five days to twelve minutes. A 2026 industry analysis found that AI-driven underwriting systems reduced standard decision time from 3 to 5 days down to just 12.4 minutes while maintaining 99.3% accuracy. A joint Microsoft-Cognizant case study published in February detailed how pre-built insurance agents now handle claims triage, policy validation, and escalation routing, tasks that previously required multiple human handoffs. McKinsey describes agentic AI as the first technology capable of actually modernizing insurance core systems at scale. What this means on your end is faster turnarounds, quicker policy issuance, and fewer bottlenecks in the underwriting pipeline. The carriers investing in this technology are going to be faster to work with, and speed matters when a client is ready to sign.

The Trump administration just signed pre-deployment AI safety testing agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation finalized the deals, making them the most concrete AI governance move from this administration to date. The agreements require pre-release safety evaluations before those companies' models go public. For insurers and financial advisors building AI-powered workflows, the signal is straightforward: regulatory AI compliance requirements are arriving faster than most organizations are prepared for. If you are integrating AI tools into your practice, start thinking now about documentation, audit trails, and vendor compliance. The rules are being written as we speak.

Deepfake claims fraud is no longer a theoretical risk. It is showing up across all lines. AI-generated content is appearing in insurance claims across personal lines, commercial lines, and specialty: inflated home damage imagery, staged vehicle accidents, and deepfake evidence are becoming a measurable carrier problem. Insurers are accelerating investment in computer vision and AI-detection tooling to counter the trend. For agents, there is a practical angle here. Being able to reassure clients that their carrier invests in anti-fraud measures, and explaining that fraudulent claims drive up renewal rates for everyone, is an increasingly relevant part of the value you provide. Fraud is not just a carrier problem. It is a retention conversation.

Closing

The MYGA-to-CD spread is as wide as it has been all year, and it will not stay this way forever. If you make one call this week, make it to the client whose CD is about to mature and show them the math. That single conversation, backed by a 230 basis point advantage, is the easiest case you will build all month. 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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