The owners of the World Trade Center site formally approved a deal on August 26 to help back a developer’s bid for two more office towers alongside the main tower with over US$1 billion in financing, ending a year-long dispute that has bedeviled redevelopment plans. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s board [...]
AIR Worldwide is estimating that insured losses from Hurricane Earl’s passage near the northern Leeward Islands earlier this week are between USD$50 million and USD$150 million. The estimate includes wind damage to insured onshore properties in the Virgin Islands, St. Maarten, St. Martin and Puerto Rico. Nearly half of the total is attributed to St. [...]
Dog bites accounted for more than one-third of all homeowners insurance liability claims paid out in 2009, costing $412 million and up 6.4 percent from 2008, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.). An analysis of homeowners insurance data by the I.I.I. found that the average cost of dog bite claims was $24,840 in 2009, [...]
An Alberta pension manager and a Toronto company are buying the remaining half of the $2-billion Summit industrial property fund from ING Group, which says it’s withdrawing from real estate to focus on banking and insurance. The Amsterdam-based financial giant owns 50 per cent of ING Summit Industrial Fund Limited Partnership outright and 7.8 per [...]
The insurance brokerage sector remains financially solid despite the weak US economy and soft commercial property & causality insurance market, Moody’s Investors Service says in its new Industry Scorecard report. “While the economic downturn and lower pricing resulted in marginal or even negative organic growth for some insurance brokers in 2009, overall the industry was [...]
Warren Buffett’s company said on August 26 it will offer to buy the roughly 1.4 million shares it doesn’t already own of its subsidiary Wesco Financial Corp., and the news sent Wesco’s stock soaring 12 per cent. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. says it will offer a combination of cash and Class B Berkshire stock to acquire [...]
World Finance, a financial information publisher, has announced the winners of its top global insurers. In Canada, Intact took top spot while Chubb earned the top marks in the United States. In the U.K., Chartis came out on top. The World Finance Awards were created in 2007 to identify industry leaders, individuals, teams and organizations [...]
On August 24, Britain’s financial regulator imposed a record fine of 2.275 million pounds (US$3.5 million) on Zurich Insurance PLC for losing confidential data on 46,000 customers. The Financial Services Authority said the security breach – which included the loss of identity information and in some cases details of bank accounts, credit cards and insured [...]
Bollywood actor John Abraham is taking the plunge and doing something no other Indian celebrity has done: he’s insuring his body; his bottom, to be precise. The actor is reportedly insuring his asset for Rs 10 crore (100 million rupees), or about CAD$2.2 million. Indian newspaper Mid-Day said that Indian insurers are not used to [...]
With predictions for a severe 2010 hurricane season, coastal residents should heed the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina by making sure to have the right type and amount of insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.). August 29 marks the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the most costly insured disaster in United States history, [...]
In its single biggest repayment of bailout loans so far, American International Group Inc. said Monday it is paying back nearly US$4 billion in taxpayer aid with proceeds from a recent debt sale. The insurer’s aircraft leasing company, International Lease Finance Corp., completed the sale of US$4.4 billion in debt. AIG will use more than [...]
Burglary, stolen wallets and pilfered identifications continue to top the list of the most common known causes of identity fraud for Travelers Insurance customers, accounting for 76 percent of all cases, according to a comprehensive study of its 2009 claims data. The findings mirror last year’s report on Travelers’ 2008 claims data which indicated that [...]
View the video here on your mobile device. President Bill Clinton hailed micro-insurer LeapFrog Investments as the “Insurer to the Poor.” (And LeapFrog is now a $137 million micro-insurance fund.) Micro-insurance is not a new idea, but on the heels of both greater awareness and investments, it is gaining steam. Is micro-insurance a success? Marik [...]
View the video here on your mobile device. Diamond Management and Technology Consultants’ Marik Brockman says there are five key factors insurers need to remember when offering micro-insurance: product design, customer awareness, distribution, premium collection and claims servicing. Marik says in this value chain, each factor has its own objective. Marik Brockman: If we talk [...]
View the video here on your mobile device. The benefits of micro-insurance for the insureds can seem fairly obvious: they are managing their risks through low-cost coverage that they may not otherwise be eligible to receive, either due to premium paying capacity or insurability conditions. But why should insurers and carriers care? Can micro-insurance help [...]
