On April 30th, 2025, I had the privilege of going to Washington DC with the NIIA to advocate with our 9 Nevada delegates certain bills to protect our industry. We got to walk all over Capitol Hill, meeting with our representatives. I have viewed these names on ballots before and read about them, but to get to meet them in person was a surreal experience. Jared Rossi, Rachel Rizzi, Cory Semel, Susan Bauman were powerhouses in all our meetings. I learned so much about our capital in such a short amount of time and was so proud of our professionalism and passion for our industry. This was a bucket list worthy experience, and I am so grateful to have been a part of it.
Our talking points were:
Tax Reform – 20% small business deduction, oppose any effort to eliminate or cap the employer tax exclusion for health insurance and protect the tax-exempt status of 501(c) organizations and oppose any proposals to subject their royalty income to unrelated business income tax. This is important because we represent a very high percentage of small businesses, and our clients depend on these bills to keep their doors open.
Disaster Mitigation – Fix Our Forests Act – recognize the role that publicly available data plays in predicting risk and extending National Flood Insurance program before its expiration, and consider long-term reauthorization of the program. We also discussed getting a definition for Wildfire so that we could exclude it from policies, opening existing markets to provide more coverage in more areas. We want to create a peril policy for Wildfire where carriers could rate more accurately and continue to take on risks. In our meeting with Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, we discussed getting this definition added, and she saw a potential way to add into bill S.91 Western Wildfire Support Act of 2025
Legal Reform – The Litigation Transparency Act of 2025 address legal system abuse, specifically by foreign entities and sophisticated investors that profit off the U.S. court system by financing and subsidizing litigation. This is particularly troubling as lawyers are already making markets for auto in places like Las Vegas almost impossible to write coverage in. Additionally, now we have third party investors buying court cases and pushing for entire aggregates of coverage so they can make quick money. We want a fair legal system, but the more that this goes unchecked, all our customers will suffer as they will just pay this out of their own premiums as Insurance companies struggle to remain profitable. In 2023 alone, there is an estimated $17 Billion in TPLF (third party litigation funding) assets.
Crop Insurance – Simply put, we are encouraging congress to oppose any legislative or regulatory efforts to reduce funding or weaken the efficient and effective private sector delivery of crop insurance.
