Douglas Shillito
This week, it was announced that the insurance industry is joining forces with technology companies and governments in a World Economic Forum-led initiative to avoid catastrophic levels of uninsured risk in the innovation economy. Swiss Re released its latest sigma study "Commercial insurance: innovation to expand the scope of insurability". Zurich published a new report: "Embracing the income protection gaps challenge: options and solutions". UK car insurance prices dipped in the third quarter, but it could be short-lived, said the Willis Towers Watson/Confused.com latest survey. A report from the International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF) indicated that UK mutuals outperformed the rest of the market in 2016 with premiums up nearly 10%. Insurance Europe published a special online resource dedicated to cyber risk insurance, and the Lloyd's Market Association (LMA) responded to the Justice Committee on the Ogden Discount Rate proposed change.
IBM announced it is building an industry-first insurance platform on the IBM Cloud that aims to improve the processes and economics for new product development, underwriting, and benefits delivery, in collaboration with MetLife and Majesco. Lloyd's signed up with Expert System for its first artificial intelligence application, and Guidewire moved for data science and risk analytics specialist Cyence. Octo Telematics is to acquire the usage-based insurance assets of Willis Towers Watson, and FICO announced that the latest version of its Enterprise Security Score is twice as accurate at predicting a data breach as the previous model. The board of PPL Ltd announced that a major update to the London Market platform had gone live, and NIIT Technologies announced that Pen Underwriting has successfully deployed its insurance exposure management software, Exact. The Hanover chose Insurity's Policy Decisions Evolution as a platform for core commercial business processing.
Standard & Poor's revised its outlook on Lloyd's to negative from stable, and Lloyd's announced it had already paid out $738m in response to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. Others announcing estimated net losses from recent hurricanes and earthquakes included AIG, Arch Capital, AXIS Capital, Lancashire, Markel, MS&AD, RenRe, SCOR, Validus, and XL Group.
Aviva is to sell its Taiwan JV stake to its partner following a review, and Lloyds Banking Group is to acquire Zurich’s UK workplace pensions and savings business in a strategic deal. Ardonagh Group is to acquire UK motor cycle specialist broker Carole Nash. Hiscox plans to significantly increase its Lloyd's Syndicate 33 capacity for 2018. Advent Claims entered into a partnership with pan-European claims specialist Van Ameyde, and Beazley underwrote its first policies backed by the security of its new Dublin-based insurance company. There were senior appointments at The Hanover, Suncorp, Arch Capital, Argo, Barbican, Everest Re, Hiscox, Gallagher, Lockton Re, and the Chartered Insurance institute (CII).
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