Beyond the tragic loss of life, the wildfires raging in Los Angeles have shined a spotlight on California’s property insurance crisis.

While many news headlines have focused on a lack of homeowner’s insurance coverage, commercial property coverage faces similar challenges.

To help address the problem, more businesses are turning to a nontraditional coverage option called parametrics to beef up protection against wildfire risk and plug any gaps left by traditional insurance policies, experts told CFO Brew.

Parametric coverage is a good option for businesses because even if their properties aren’t destroyed, they may still lose income due to employees not being able to work, Janet Ruiz, director of strategic communication at the Insurance Information Institute, told CFO Brew.

“There’s a lot of issues for commercial [properties] after these big catastrophes,” she said. “The Los Angeles fires have a lot more commercial [properties affected] throughout the areas than some of the risk areas we see that are more rural.”

Click here for more on how businesses are protecting themselves with parametric insurance.—AZ

Half of the Big Four accounting firms’ British outposts aren’t bringing on enough women partners to meet their 2025 goals in the UK, according to the Financial Times, while the other two are falling short on their global goals.

EY, where women held 28% of equity partner roles last year, isn’t going to meet its goal of increasing that to 40% in 2025, while PwC UK reported 27% of women partners compared to its 30% goal for this year.

“KPMG and Deloitte have already met” their UK goals for women partners, the FT reported, although their percentages aren’t much better than at the other two. Women held 29% of equity partnerships at KPMG in 2023, surpassing its 2022 goal of 25%. The UK leader for women partners is Deloitte: Last year, it reported that 30% of its partners were women, “ahead of its 2025 deadline to hit that figure.”

Defending their pace, the firms have pointed to “the need to build a pipeline of candidates with sufficient experience to be promoted,” the FT reported.

Keep reading here.—GD

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s injunction on the embattled Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), but we doubt there was any Champagne flowing at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

It turns out that the law still can’t be enforced while a separate injunction—from a judge in the same district court—is in place, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Let’s recap. The CTA, which requires millions of companies in the US to file beneficial ownership information (BOI), was blocked nationwide on Dec. 3 by Judge Amos Mazzant of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Except for a few days in December—when an appeals court paused the injunction before their own colleagues put it back in place—the nationwide ban had been in place until Thursday, when Justice Samuel Alito ruled that it would be lifted while the constitutionality of the CTA is before an appeals court, the Washington Post reported.

So…what’s next? Companies can keep submitting BOIs voluntarily, which hundreds of thousands have actually done since the CTA was first put on hold on Dec. 3. Oral arguments in the appeals court case are scheduled for March 25.

Click here for more on the legal uncertainty around the CTA.—GD