Cincinnati Financial Corporation Expands Board With Appointment of Independent Director
CINCINNATI, June 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Cincinnati Financial Corporation (Nasdaq: CINF) - Cincinnati Financial Corporation's board of directors added a 14(th) seat, appointing Edward S. Wilkins, CPA, to the board and as a member of its audit committee, effective immediately.
Wilkins is a retired Audit & Assurance partner with Deloitte & Touche LLP. During his more than 35 years at Deloitte, he served as the lead audit partner for some of the organization's largest clients, primarily in the financial services sector. As leader of Deloitte's audit analytics practice, Wilkins was instrumental in integrating large data and analytics into current audit approaches, working closely with the national audit group to drive innovation and embrace change.
Wilkins also represented Deloitte on several committees that shaped leading practices for the audit profession, including the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's Data and Technology Task Force, the Center of Audit Quality's Data Analytics Task Force and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants/National Association of Insurance Commissioners Task Force.
Wilkins continues to share his financial knowledge and experience, serving as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management and advising Rutgers' Continuous Auditing and Reporting Lab.
Stephen M. Spray, president and chief executive officer, commented: "Ed's background of serving as lead audit partner for many of the largest insurance companies in the country makes him an ideal candidate for our board. He understands the complex regulatory environment in which we operate and can advise us as we further deepen our analytical capabilities. I'm confident that his skills complement the strengths of our current board of directors, enhancing the value we create for shareholders."
About Cincinnati Financial
Cincinnati Financial Corporation offers primarily business, home and auto insurance through The Cincinnati Insurance Company and its two standard market property casualty companies. The same local independent insurance agencies that market those policies may offer products of our other subsidiaries, including life insurance, fixed annuities and surplus lines property and casualty insurance. For additional information about the company, please visit cinfin.com.
Mailing Address: Street Address:
P.O. Box 145496 6200 South Gilmore
Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45250-5496 Fairfield, Ohio
45014-5141
Safe Harbor
This is our "Safe Harbor" statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our business is subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those suggested by the forward-looking statements in this report. Some of those risks and uncertainties are discussed in our 2024 Annual Report on Form 10-K, Item 1A, Risk Factors, Page 30.
-- Effects of any future pandemic that could affect results for reasons
such as:
-- Securities market disruption or volatility and related effects such
as decreased economic activity and continued supply chain
disruptions that affect our investment portfolio and book value
-- An unusually high level of claims in our insurance or reinsurance
operations that increase litigation-related expenses
-- An unusually high level of insurance losses, including risk of court
decisions extending business interruption insurance in commercial
property coverage forms to cover claims for pure economic loss
related to such pandemic
-- Decreased premium revenue and cash flow from disruption to our
distribution channel of independent agents, consumer self-isolation,
travel limitations, business restrictions and decreased economic
activity
-- Inability of our workforce, agencies or vendors to perform necessary
business functions
-- Unusually high levels of catastrophe losses due to risk concentrations,
changes in weather patterns (whether as a result of climate change or
otherwise), environmental events, war or political unrest, terrorism
incidents, cyberattacks, civil unrest or other causes and our ability to
manage catastrophe risk due to inaccurate catastrophe models or
incomplete data
-- Increased frequency and/or severity of claims or development of claims
that are unforeseen at the time of policy issuance, due to inflationary
trends or other causes
-- Inadequate estimates or assumptions, or reliance on third-party data
used for critical accounting estimates
-- Declines in overall stock market values negatively affecting our equity
portfolio and book value
-- Interest rate fluctuations or other factors that could significantly
affect:
-- Our ability to generate growth in investment income
-- Values of our fixed-maturity investments, including accounts in
which we hold bank-owned life insurance contract assets
-- Our traditional life policy reserves
-- Domestic and global events, such as the wars in Ukraine and in the
Middle East, recent tariff and trade policy announcements, and
disruptions in the banking and financial services industry, resulting in
insurance losses, capital market or credit market uncertainty, followed
by prolonged periods of economic instability or recession, that lead to:
-- Significant or prolonged decline in the fair value of a particular
security or group of securities and impairment of the asset(s)
-- Significant decline in investment income due to reduced or
eliminated dividend payouts from a particular security or group of
securities
-- Significant rise in losses from surety or director and officer
policies written for financial institutions or other insured
entities or in losses from policies written by Cincinnati Re or
Cincinnati Global.
-- Our inability to manage business opportunities, growth prospects, and
expenses for our ongoing operations
-- Recession, prolonged elevated inflation or other economic conditions
resulting in lower demand for insurance products or increased payment
delinquencies
-- Ineffective information technology systems or discontinuing to develop
and implement improvements in technology may impact our success and
profitability
-- Difficulties with technology or data security breaches, including
cyberattacks, that could negatively affect our - or our agents' -
ability to conduct business; disrupt our relationships with agents,
policyholders and others; cause reputational damage, mitigation expenses
and data loss and expose us to liability
-- Difficulties with our operations and technology that may negatively
impact our ability to conduct business, including cloud-based data
information storage, data security, cyberattacks, remote working
capabilities, and/or outsourcing relationships and third-party
operations and data security
-- Disruption of the insurance market caused by technology innovations such
as driverless cars that could decrease consumer demand for insurance
products
-- Delays, inadequate data developed internally or from third parties, or
performance inadequacies from ongoing development and implementation of
underwriting and pricing methods, including telematics and other
usage-based insurance methods, or technology projects and enhancements
expected to increase our pricing accuracy, underwriting profit and
competitiveness
-- Intense competition, and the impact of innovation, artificial
intelligence and changing customer preferences on the insurance industry
and the markets in which we operate, could harm our ability to maintain
or increase our business volumes and profitability
-- Changing consumer insurance-buying habits
-- Mergers, acquisitions and other consolidations of agencies that result
in a concentration of a significant amount of premium in one agency or
agency group and/or alter our competitive advantages
-- Inability to obtain adequate ceded reinsurance on acceptable terms,
amount of reinsurance coverage purchased, financial strength of
reinsurers and the potential for nonpayment or delay in payment by
reinsurers
-- Inability to defer policy acquisition costs for any business segment if
pricing and loss trends would lead management to conclude that segment
could not achieve sustainable profitability
-- Inability of our subsidiaries to pay dividends consistent with current
or past levels
-- Events or conditions that could weaken or harm our relationships with
our independent agencies and hamper opportunities to add new agencies,
resulting in limitations on our opportunities for growth, such as:
-- Downgrades of our financial strength ratings
-- Concerns that doing business with us is too difficult
-- Perceptions that our level of service, particularly claims service,
is no longer a distinguishing characteristic in the marketplace
-- Inability or unwillingness to nimbly develop and introduce coverage
product updates and innovations that our competitors offer and
consumers expect to find in the marketplace
-- Actions of insurance departments, state attorneys general or other
regulatory agencies, including a change to a federal system of
regulation from a state-based system, that:
-- Impose new obligations on us that increase our expenses or change
the assumptions underlying our critical accounting estimates
-- Place the insurance industry under greater regulatory scrutiny or
result in new statutes, rules and regulations
-- Restrict our ability to exit or reduce writings of unprofitable
coverages or lines of business
-- Add assessments for guaranty funds, other insurance-related
assessments or mandatory reinsurance arrangements; or that impair
our ability to recover such assessments through future surcharges or
other rate changes
-- Increase our provision for federal income taxes due to changes in
tax law
-- Increase our other expenses
-- Limit our ability to set fair, adequate and reasonable rates
-- Place us at a disadvantage in the marketplace
-- Restrict our ability to execute our business model, including the
way we compensate agents
-- Adverse outcomes from litigation or administrative proceedings,
including effects of social inflation and third-party litigation funding
on the size of litigation awards
-- Events or actions, including unauthorized intentional circumvention of
controls, that reduce our future ability to maintain effective internal
control over financial reporting under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
-- Unforeseen departure of certain executive officers or other key
employees due to retirement, health or other causes that could interrupt
progress toward important strategic goals or diminish the effectiveness
of certain longstanding relationships with insurance agents and others
-- Our inability, or the inability of our independent agents, to attract
and retain personnel in a competitive labor market
-- Events, such as an epidemic, natural catastrophe or terrorism, that
could hamper our ability to assemble our workforce at our headquarters
location or work effectively in a remote environment
Further, our insurance businesses are subject to the effects of changing social, global, economic and regulatory environments. Public and regulatory initiatives have included efforts to adversely influence and restrict premium rates, restrict the ability to cancel policies, impose underwriting standards and expand overall regulation. We also are subject to public and regulatory initiatives that can affect the market value for our common stock, such as measures affecting corporate financial reporting and governance. The ultimate changes and eventual effects, if any, of these initiatives are uncertain.
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SOURCE Cincinnati Financial Corporation
