What's New with the SLA

Join industry leaders, insurance executives, brokers and policymakers on February 11, 2025 at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, CA. Forge connections that will define the future of surplus lines and gain insights that will drive your success in a rapidly changing market. To learn more please visit www.slaannualmeeting.com.

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.