Insurer – Country of Destination – Date Announced – Source MS Amlin – Brussels – 28 June 2017 – Press release Lloyd’s of London – Brussels – QBE – Brussels – CNA Hardy – Luxembourg – RSA – Luxembourg – AIG – Luxembourg – FM Global – Luxembourg – Hiscox – Luxembourg – Liberty Mutual, Special Markets – Luxembourg – Admiral – Dublin – Beazley – Dublin – Chesnara –

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase’s announcement that they will create an independent company to offer health care to their employees “free from profit-making incentives and constraints” sent a shock through the health care industry, with share prices of some incumbents tumbling on Jan. 30, 2018.

Every working day, doctors in the U.K. diagnose almost 1,000 people with type 2 diabetes. It is one of the commonest and most expensive diseases. What most people don’t know is that with a bit of hard work, it is possible to become non-diabetic again.

Happiness is the subject of countless quotations, slogans, self-help books and personal choices. It is also being taken seriously by national governments and organisations like the United Nations, as something societies should aim for.

U.S. gross domestic product is at an all-time high. U.S. life expectancy is not. Life expectancy has fallen for the second time in two years – from a high of 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 years in 2016. It fell for men and women, whites, blacks and Hispanics. Statistics show that thousands were preventable, premature deaths.

Mid-2018 will see German insurer Allianz sell part of its Taiwan business’s traditional life insurance portfolio to China Life Insurance in a move by Allianz to actively manage its Taiwan life portfolio for more capital-efficient solutions. The deal includes a portfolio of around 78,000 policies with a guaranteed interest rate of 4 percent or higher, with combined policy reserves of 1.2 billion euros (on a IFRS basis, $1.42 billion

‘Why is it so unpopular,’ the editorial asks, ‘to work longer even among people with longer life expectancy and in good health? Is the proposition of retirement and leisure so much more attractive than work, even if working longer is rewarded with higher pensions? Does it perhaps make no economic sense to work longer? Or are people being pushed out of work by their employers who do not see

The seventh annual World Pensions & Investments Forum will be held on 22 and 23 March 2018 in Paris, France. The conference focuses on “Remaking Long-Term Investment and Board Governance”; the provisional agenda can be downloaded here. The conference is organized by the World Pensions Council, the international association of pension and social security funds. It is open to representatives of pension funds, sovereign funds, government agencies, and insurance

Aetna in November 2017 sold its group life and disability insurance and absence management business to The Hartford for $1.45bn. Life and disability was the only non-health insurance related part of the business remaining after Aetna cut its property casualty insurance business in the mid-1990s. It only brought in about $2bn in premiums in 2016, while Aetna recorded $63.1bn in total revenue, and healthcare premium revenues reached $54.1bn. The

Sompo International Holdings, a Bermuda-based specialty provider of property and casualty insurance and reinsurance and wholly-owned subsidiary of Sompo Holdings of Tokyo, Japan, has launched a new strategic partnership in Africa: Sompo International will form alliances with both Sanlam Limited and SAHAM Finances through a partnership agreement executed by Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Insurance. This partnership will give access to new markets by allowing Sompo to leverage the experience and

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that between 291,000 and 646,000 people worldwide will die from seasonal influenza-related respiratory illnesses each year, higher than a previous estimate of 250,000 to 500,000. These findings are based on a multinational survey from a collaborative study by CDC and global health partners. The study appeared in a December 2017 issue of The Lancet. The new estimates, which exclude deaths

SunCorp Group, one of Australia’s largest financial services institutions, announced in October 2017 that they have named Gary Charles Dransfield as Chief Executive Officer, Insurance. Mr. Dransfield has been with Suncorp since August 2009, first as Executive General Manager for Personal Insurance Retail Distribution, and then as Chief Executive Officer Vero New Zealand in April 2011, Chief Executive Officer Personal Insurance in October 2015. He most recently filled the

Global Bankers Insurance Group, an international family of insurance and reinsurance companies, will acquire Lincoln Benefit Life Company, a Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.-based provider of life insurance and annuity solutions. The transaction that will conclude in the first quarter of 2018. Subject to appropriate regulatory approvals by the Nebraska Dept. of Insurance, the sale was prompted by the decision of Lincoln’s Resolution Group, which planned consolidation of Lincoln’s insurance activities

Lloyds Banking Group, the parent of Scottish Widows, in October 2017 announced a deal wherein it will buy Zurich UK’s workplace pensions and savings business in Q1 of 2018. The combined deal would place Scottish Widows as the UK’s third largest workplace savings provider. Zurich will get exclusive distribution rights for group life protection to certain corporate clients of Lloyds’ commercial banking business, while broadening Scottish Widows’ offering in

The Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) has released a report that provides ‘a series of policy recommendations aimed at enhancing the contribution of the cyber insurance market to managing increasingly prevalent risk’. The report, based on questionnaire responses culled from insurers, reinsurers, and brokers active in the global market, as well as the ministries of finance and insurance regulators responsible for overseeing that market, identifies the growing cyber risk

Thomsons, the company behind the online benefits platform Darwin and a member of Mercer, in December 2017 released its Global Employee Benefits Watch Report 2017/8 entitled “The next wave of globalization and digitization.” The report focuses on the pace and scale of change in the global benefits market and especially the importance of the adoption of a technology infrastructure which is “three times more likely to see a reduction

Willis Towers Watson (WTW) in October 2017 announced that it has appointed Neil B. J. Irwin as the new leader of the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEEMEA) region, reporting to Adam Garrard, WTW’s head of International. Irwin will also act as head of Corporate Risk and Broking for CEEMEA. The CEEMEA is a diverse and high-growth region with around 2,300 WTW employees in more than

Pensions at a Glance 2017, a new report issued in December 2017 by the OECD, warns that further reforms are needed across OECD countries to mitigate the impact of population aging, increasing inequality among the elderly and changing the nature of work. The OECD also says that public spending on pensions for the OECD as a whole has risen by about 1.5% of GDP since 2000; however, the pace

As the growth of pan-European pension plans is reported to accelerate, asset manager Amundi and insurer LaLux jointly organize a topical half-day conference on 5 February 2018 in Luxembourg. Featured speakers include: Luxembourg Minister of Finance, Pierre Gramegna European Commission head of the insurance and pensions unit, Nathalie Berger PensionsEurope CEO, Matti Leppala EIOPA Executive Director, Fausto Parente Create Research CEO, Prof. Amin Rajan Group head of compensation &

Engineers at Cornell University have developed a simple method for gathering a patient’s vital signs using radio waves. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags use low-power radio frequencies and are similar to the anti-theft tags we find in department stores. These ‘passive’ RFID tags require no batteries, and can transmit information such as heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rates from multiple patients simultaneously. By measuring internal body motion, such

Deloitte in December 2017 released three reports discussing potential developments in the insurance industry for 2018 and beyond. 2018 Insurance Industry Outlook – Industry trends, strategies to stay competitive Page with link to report 2018 U.S. Insurance Regulatory Outlook – Forging ahead amid uncertainty Page with link to report IAIS update: 2017 annual meeting – Insurance supervisors focus on risk and regulatory standards Page with link to report The

The RIMS-Certified Risk Management Professional certification (RIMS-CRMP), is now the only certification program in the world to hold accredited status, RIMS announced in December 2017. RIMS-CRMP received official accreditation by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) under ISO/IEC 1702:2012. ANSI accreditation signifies that the Institute recognizes the competence of RIMS to carry out certification activities in accordance with requirements defined in International Standards and confirms approval by government and

Sleep technology firm Shleep in December 2017 announced plans to showcase its neuroscience-driven sleep application at CES 2018. Available on iOS and Android mobile devices, Shleep is a fun, easy to use, science-based sleep coaching app that helps people change their behavior to improve sleep. Poor sleep has many negative effects More than a third of American adults are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis and, as

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s report, Technology and Pensions, was released in December 2017, providing an overview of how technology (FinTech) is being used to improve pension design and delivery and how regulators are managing these changes. The report comes after a discussion on the challenges that regulators face to support FinTech from a roundtable held at the G20/OECD Task Force on Financial Consumer Protection meeting held

Governments in Paris, Berlin, London, Madrid, and Rome sent a joint letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in mid-December 2017 warning him of the risk of tax treaty violations arising from the tax reform under discussion in the United States. If Donald Trump is relying heavily on the tax reform submitted to Congress in autumn − to rebuild his image − he is sending shudders through

Randstad North America, a global provider of HR services, in December 2017 released its 4th Quarter Talent Trends Quarterly, an analysis of current hiring and workplace trends that will impact the U.S. workplace in 2018 and beyond. The report opens with a warning to human capital and business leaders: ‘embrace change to (their workforce’s) advantage or potentially fall behind’, and recommends that employers ‘become more agile, open, and flexible

The Organization for Economic Development (OECD), in December 2017 released a new report, Robo-Advice for Pensions, which looks at the rising trend of technological innovation in finance, specifically the robo-advice model. This model has been proposed as one potential solution for helping individuals manage pensions and invest for retirement. Essentially, ‘robo-advisors’ propose to make investing more affordable and accessible for consumers by relying on user-friendly digital platforms, algorithms, and