US property and casualty (P&C) insurers saw a sharp turnaround in fortunes in the first nine months of 2018, turning a $21bn net underwriting loss into a $4.7bn net underwriting gain. According to ISO, a Verisk business, and the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCI), private US P&C insurers reported a $4.7bn net underwriting gain for the first nine months…
The Global Federation of Insurance Associations (GFIA) has warned that the International Association of Insurance Supervisors’ (IAIS) paper on insurers’ recovery planning is overly prescriptive. GFIA said the significant costs insurers face when developing recovery plans, as well as the existence of other risk management tools, mean that insurance supervisors must have the flexibility to tailor rules, and therefore welcomed…
Lloyd’s should focus on the US rather than emerging economies, according to Andrew Brooks, the incoming chair of the Lloyd’s Market Association, reported in the Financial Times. Mr Brook told the Financial Times that Lloyd’s should be making bigger efforts in the US: “By focusing on those developing countries so heavily, we’ve lost traction in our key market of North…
In July 2018, news emerged that between 27 June and 4 July, hackers had infiltrated the IT systems of Singapore Health Services (SingHealth), the largest healthcare group in Singapore. The hackers illegally accessed and copied the non-medical personal particulars of 1,495,367 patients to servers hosted overseas. Approximately 159,000 of the affected group, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and several…
Risk managers will be interested to hear that insurers Allianz, Zurich and QBE, brokers Willis Towers Watson and Marsh, and reinsurer Swiss Re are among 230 firms included in the global Bloomberg 2019 Gender Equality Index, regarded as the ‘gold seal’ for corporate commitment to gender equality…
A large number of midsized natural catastrophes drove 2018 insurance losses to $71.5bn, the third highest in the past eight years and above the annual average of $65.5bn since 2011, said Willis Re in its annual nat cat review. Willis Re said 2018 was “unusual” because a series of smaller catastrophes, rather than one large event, pushed the insured total…
Africa experienced a low number of natural catastrophes in 2018, compared to an eventful second half of the year, which contributed to a high overall loss figure of $160bn. According to Munich Re, half of these global losses were insured and, as a result, the loss burden for insurers was substantially higher than the long-term average. Notably, there were clear…
The world’s inability to cooperate and tackle major global risks has reached “crisis levels”, and is only expected to worsen in the year ahead, finds the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Global Risks Report 2019…
Cash collection remains a problem for insurers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to AM Best. It said the cause was a lack of a market-wide, regulatory-enforced mechanism to reconcile subrogation accounts between parties. Best said that while average insurance debtor days for listed UAE-national insurers has showed an improving trend, they were well above the average for the…
Premium rates for the fourth quarter of 2018 in the US saw increases across nearly all major commercial lines compared to the third quarter, according to the IVANS Index. Workers’ compensation, however, saw average premium renewal rate change decrease further. Commercial auto, general liability, commercial property and umbrella all experienced the greatest premium renewal rate change in the fourth quarter.…