Howden and A J Gallagher are frontrunners for the Willis Towers Watson (WTW) business in Europe that it seems Aon will have to dispose of to gain the EC’s approval for a planned $30bn acquisition of the group, a senior industry source in Germany told Commercial Risk Europe. It is also thought that McGill and Partners, the London-based broker launched…
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) is investigating Facebook for breach of Europe’s GDPR, following reports that the personal data of 533 million accounts recently appeared online for free. Designated as Facebook’s lead regulator in the EU, the DPC said it believes “one or more” GDPR rules may have been infringed after details including phone numbers, dates of birth and other…
Specialist insurer Beazley has launched enhanced versions of its Beazley Breach Response (BBR) and InfoSec cyber policies for businesses domiciled in Germany. InfoSec gives large businesses access to first-party cover for cyber risks. This includes protection for cyber extortion, data recovery costs, as well as business interruption (BI) and contingent BI for losses arising from security breaches, system failures and…
Life science firms must address new risks driven by changes to their business during the response to Covid-19, with insurers “playing catchup”, according to a sector report from Willis Towers Watson (WTW). WTW says the life science sector is still running with elevated supply chain risks as a result of the pandemic, adding that sudden progress in technical innovations and…
The UK’s risk management association Airmic is to hold a livestreamed technology forum on 13 May, to examine how the pandemic has driven technological transformation. The event is the first in a series of technical forums dedicated to topical risk issues, which will also include climate change and geopolitics as well as technology. The agenda includes a Q&A session with…
Lloyd’s chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown has called for greater awareness among UK companies of the risk from bioterrorism. Increased public-private partnerships (PPPs) and ensuring more contingent capability must also be pursued if the UK’s corporate sector is to manage the growing threat of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) attacks, said Mr Carnegie-Brown. The Lloyd’s chief made his remarks at a…
The Global Risk Report, published every year by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in collaboration with Marsh & McLennan and Zurich, captures global businesses’ perceptions of major risks and their potential medium-term impacts. But what happens when we move from perceptions to actions, when organisations translate their intuitions and forecasts into concrete data? To understand this, Marsh elaborated with Risk…
Stronger rates and efforts to modernise processes have steered the London market to a stable outlook from ratings agency AM Best. The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns forced a “long-needed culture change” within the London market to digitalise its business and processes, “potentially driving permanent changes to the way the market both interacts and transacts”, AM Best said. Assigning the outlook,…
Only half of UK insurance companies have carried out a cyber risk assessment since home working took hold in the pandemic, with 44% admitting they have inadequate cyber threat visibility and detection systems to protect employees operating remotely, according to a new survey by cloud service protection experts Doherty Associates. The survey also found that 25% of UK insurance firms…
Large companies in the US and Europe are most at risk of cyberattack following the vulnerabilities exposed in Microsoft Exchange systems since the beginning of this year, according to CyberCube. In a report analysing the new threat, CyberCube says the attacks using Microsoft Exchange email servers could lead to thousands of insurance claims. It adds that insurers are “likely to…