Douglas Shillito
This week, Fitch Ratings said that the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) review of the London Market could result in lower pricing and it becoming more competitive with smaller hubs across the world. A Willis Towers Watson-sponsored survey indicated that there were bigger but fewer insurance mergers globally, and Standard & Poor's said that life insurers have most to gain from China's decision to ease restrictions on foreign ownership of financial institutions. GlobalData said that insurers have a role to play in educating SMEs about cyber-attack risk. The International Underwriting Association (IUA) published a good practice guide for delegated authority arrangements in the London company market, and The Global Federation of Insurance Associations (GFIA) provided comments to the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) on its extended field testing of the Insurance Capital Standard(ICS) version 1.0.
Advent Claims was selected as a partner and vendor for the Claims Expert Management Hub for Lloyd’s carriers, and the second release of Structured Data Capture was announced - one of the core solutions in the London Market Target Operating Model(LM TOM). AIR Worldwide updated its loss estimates from the recent Californian Wildfires at $8bn to 10.5bn. Guidewire's new InsurancePlatform release included new versions of DataHub, InfoCenter, and Predictive Analytics, and the software supplier also announced that claims specialist Symbility had joined Guidewire PartnerConnect as a Solution partner. Charles Taylor InsurTech said it was launching the world’s first cloud-based life, health and protection core insurance platform, and a Leading Florida insurer selected PCIS's ClaimsVISION solution. RDT strengthened its long-term partnership with Towergate Underwriting, and Tony Tarquini, European Insurance director at Pegasystems, commented on the top five InsurTech trends expected in 2018.
There were further third quarter and nine months financials and trading updates published. They included AXA (indicated strategic direction), Prudential (continued growth across all areas), Zurich (updated on strategy for 2017 to 2019), ARIG (net profits up over nine months but small loss in third quarter), and PartnerRe (net loss of $84m for third quarter).
Aviva is to acquire Friends First in Ireland, and UK motor insurer Sabre launched a £600m IPO. Agora Syndicate 3268 received the Lloyd's nod to commence underwriting from 1st January, whilst Lloyd's also approved Dale Underwriting Partners' special purpose arrangement (SPA). Beazley's Breach Response cyber policy has been redesigned as cyber threats significantly increase. Compre continued acquiring, MAPFRE RE is to open a representative office in Tokyo to build on its Asian presence, and Peak Re received approval to conduct reinsurance business in Singapore.
Full articles on the above topics may be found on the Insurance Newslink and Financial Newslink global trends database services at www.onlystrategic.com