What's New with the SLA

On February 21, 2023, the Surplus Line Association of California partnered with AM Best in a panel discussion about the growth of MGA/MGU and the program business in the surplus line and specialty insurance industry. The SLA’s Chief Industry and Regulatory Officer, David Kodama, Jr., moderated the panel discussion with AM Best’s Managing Director, Jeff Mango, and its Senior Director, Sridhar Manyem, while they discussed the rating agency’s performance assessment process for MGAs and market implications.

The SLA was pleased to partner with AM Best and looks forward to more collaborations in the future. We would like to thank David Kodama, Jr., Jeff Mango and Sridhar Manyem for their expertise.

On February 15th, The Surplus Lines Association of California held the 2023 SLA Annual Meeting. The SLA Board Chair, Janet Beaver, and CEO and Executive Director, Ben McKay delivered important updates regarding the organization and surplus lines industry. Our keynote speaker, expert strategist, and best-selling author, Nancy Giordano, joined us to discuss the current state of artificial intelligence and how to navigate our teams into the future.

We are proud to announce that the SLA is in good standing and has no bad debt, which allowed the SLA Board of Directors to unanimously vote in 2022 to lower the stamping fee from .25% to .18%. In addition, the SLA has many exciting events lined up this year, including collaborations with the Excess Line Association of New York and AM Best.  

The SLA is proud to host another successful meeting and we would like to thank our Board Chair, Janet, CEO and Executive Director, Ben McKay, and our keynote speaker, Nancy Giordano, for their expertise and insight.

We are excited to announce our latest improvements to SLIP are now live! These enhancements were designed to help you:   

• Decrease redundant data entry   
• Increase data accuracy 
• Reduce tags 

For more information and a detailed tutorial, please watch this
5-minute video.

As a quick overview, we have highlighted some of the new features:   

• The address of the Insured.  The SLA now requires the full address of the insured to be entered on Policy Details. This will automatically populate to any Online SL1 Forms and Online SL2 Forms generated for this policy, ensuring consistency across all forms.   
• Location of the Risk. The SLA now requires the location of the risk to be entered on Policy Details.
• Description of the Risk. The SLA now requires a description of the risk on the transaction details. This description will automatically populate to any Online SL1 Forms and Online SL2 forms generated for this policy, ensuring consistency across all forms. 

Read Only and Disabled fields:

• Various auto-filled fields will become read-only to ensure that filing information is accurate and consistent to help prevent SL13 tags. 
• If there are fields that do not need to be filled on the SL Forms for the current filing, they have been locked to ease confusion and prevent unnecessary work.  

• Users now have the ability to save contact information for Admitted Carriers for Section 7B and apply the saved information when filling out the SL2 form. 

We hope you find this information about our latest enhancement helpful. If you have any questions or need to contact us regarding the SLIP enhancements, please email or call us Monday – Friday 8:30-5:30 PT. 

The Surplus Line Association of California is committed to fostering a healthy, fair and competitive marketplace. Our board of directors, under the leadership of Janet Beaver, unanimously decided to lower California’s stamping fee from .25% to .18%. Faced with historic inflation, concerns of recession, global political unrest, and emerging from Covid-19, the Surplus Line Association of California continues to grow its services for stakeholders while reducing cost. And that’s a win! We’re here to help.  

We’ve created this 2-minute video with all the important details. Take a look!  

For more detailed information about how and when to apply the new stamping fee to new and renewal business, endorsements, non-expiring policies, and master policy certificates, please visit our Stamping Fee Information website. 

You can also email or call us at 415.434.4900 if you have questions about this change.  

For the first time ever, on April 19, 2022, the SLA partnered with the Excess Line Association of New York (ELANY) to offer a continuing education course to the members of both associations!

This kind of unprecedented collaboration between two of the largest and most prominent leaders in the surplus line association world marked a historic moment, and for this first-ever collaborative CE course, ELANY and the SLA chose a topic of high importance to their associations, the surplus lines industry, and our entire society: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

The webinar—“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion You Can Use—A Practical Approach”—discussed practical steps that insurance producers and professionals, both as managers and individuals, can implement to make their organizations more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

The SLA’s collaboration with ELANY, as with all of its outreach to its industry partners, was driven by the Board of Directors’ longstanding charge for the SLA to be a modern, credible leader in the surplus lines industry. The SLA also has accepted the challenge from its board to be a leader on the important topic of DEI. This partnership was a big step forward on both of these charges.

It is important for the SLA to be not just a California leader, but a national leader as well. More than half of the SLA’s licensed members live and work outside California, and they can be found in almost every state. This new collaborative approach has enabled the SLA to gain additional access to its members across the country, wherever they may be.

The SLA was pleased to partner with ELANY on this worthwhile project and thanks its executive director, Dan Maher, and his team for collaborating with the SLA on this historic partnership.