Intelligent Insurer News

The dynamic around rates and terms and conditions, the impact of alternative capacity on the market and how to grow those will be some of the biggest talking points at this year’s annual American Property Casualty Insurance Association conference in Boston, according to a survey of Intelligent Insurer readers.

Insurers at Lloyd’s could benefit from the rapid growth of the legal cannabis industry in the US and Canada, a legal expert has claimed.

The creation of an ever-more standardised blockchain framework represents a key moment for the evolution of blockchain technology and the insurtech sector more widely.

One of the top priorities of the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA) over the next 12 months will be working with state regulators to ensure the bilateral covered agreement on insurance and reinsurance between the EU and the US, signed in 2017, is implemented by all states before the five-year deadline is reached.

After several years of heavy losses and other unexpected challenges such as loss creep and trapped capital, insurance-linked securities (ILS) investors are much more cautious going into the year-end renewals, with many readjusting their portfolios and attempts being made by some to solve the problem of trapped capital.

Loss creep remains a big issue for the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, with some investors grappling with developments around the impact of 2017’s Hurricane Irma, which inflicted $77 billion in economic losses in the Northern Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Florida.

Wildfire risk is considered a “new major peril” by reinsurers after the heavy losses of recent years. But the industry has a much better understanding of this risk following investments in risk models and better education about the nature of the risk.

The number of complaints about motor and transport insurance fell 10% to 248,460 in the first half of 2019, down from 277, 363 from the second half of last year, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.

Global specialty insurer StarStone has appointed Henry Gillingham as head of war & terrorism in its crisis management division.

Guy Carpenter a global risk and reinsurance specialist and a business of Marsh & McLennan Companies, has appointed Dominic Samengo-Turner to the role of Global facultative leader.

North Carolina-based REIN, a company with an enterprise insurtech platform, has appointed Kate Sampson to its advisory board.

Everyone is talking about insurtech, but apart from its being a useful portmanteau term, does the reality live up to the hype that surrounds it? Intelligent Insurer asks those in the know.

Some 1.4 million dogs across the UK have been injured by a stick, reveals new research by Direct Line Pet Insurance, which urges dog owners to use a safe, specially designed eco-friendly throw toy instead.

Munich Re has made a consolidated profit of approximately €850 million in the third quarter, despite high major-loss expenditure.

Global broking business Brokerslink and Swiss Re Corporate Solutions are to develop a dedicated international insurance programme management platform for the organisation’s broker network.

US insurers face a unique set of challenges as they consider their growth strategies. Tom Hettinger of Guy Carpenter explains his company’s innovative tool GC Mosaic which helps clients make better growth decisions based on analytics and real data, to Intelligent Insurer.

Insurers’ pricing has picked up in 2019, and this will continue into 2020, as companies look to address recent weak profitability, according to the insurance analyst team at RBC Markets

Women in Reinsurance (WiRe), the organization for professional women employed in the Bermuda reinsurance sector, has appointed Peta White as chair of the Board.

Davies, an operations management, consulting and digital solutions provider, has acquired Alternative Service Concepts (ASC), a workers’ compensation and property and casualty third party administrator (TPA) headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

Blockchain should be viewed as a “team sport” by the risk-transfer industry as opposed to a specific technology; more a way of connecting companies and people and gaining efficiencies.