Can do better: insurers get a mixed report card
27 August 2012
Reaction to the full and half-year profit results of Australia’s major listed insurers have been mixed, to say the least…
Analysis
Money makes the insurance world go round
20 August 2012
The cause of the current spate of musical chairs taking place at the top end of the local insurance broking sector can be traced back as far as the early 1990s…
Microinsurance opens new insurance markets
13 August 2012
People in developing countries may not have much material wealth to insure, but providing them with basic cover does give insurers an entrée to rapidly growing economies…
Now is the time for insurers to embrace social media
06 August 2012
The financial services industry, including insurance, has not come to grips with the use of social media…
Olympics are an anxious event for underwriters
30 July 2012
With the London Olympics now in full swing, athletes and their families have their fingers crossed and their hearts in their throats…
Distribution becomes institutionalised. Could the contagion spread?
23 July 2012
While everybody has been watching the machinations of regulatory reform over the past year, a turf war has broken out in the world of financial services product distribution…
NSW considers impact from ditching levy
16 July 2012
The slow march to abolish inappropriate taxes on insurance continues, with the NSW Government launching a three-month consultation on reforming collection of the state’s Emergency Services Levy…
Rates: Where to from here?
09 July 2012
Yet again, insurers have talked the talk but failed to walk the walk, with brokers reporting lower-than-expected rises at the mid-year commercial renewals…
Government signals a backflip on opt-out flood cover
02 July 2012
The Federal Government has given its strongest signal yet that it will not pursue the introduction of opt-out flood insurance with its announcement of a range of soft measures aimed at…
Age discrimination is an emerging insurance issue
25 June 2012
Age discrimination in insurance policies is emerging as the next major government policy issue for the industry…
NSW fire services levy: it’s time
18 June 2012
A few years ago the idea of either the Victorian or NSW governments dropping the levies they imposed on insurers to fund their fire services was a very long-odds bet…
Reinsurers taking a tougher line on risk
12 June 2012
There is plenty of reinsurance capacity in the market, but insurers expect – and are getting – tougher scrutiny this year from reinsurers under pressure from low investment returns and high catastrophe…
Bureaucracy, not benefits, are the curse of WorkCover
04 June 2012
NSW WorkCover, its insurer agents, lawyers, doctors and injured workers all want the state’s workers’ compensation scheme to be more effective, but they are divided on how to achieve this…
Europe moves the focus on insurers’ assets
28 May 2012
Insurers have always been conservative investors, putting the bulk of their assets in government bonds and fixed interest accounts…
Victoria’s fire levy phase-out debacle has tempers rising
21 May 2012
The end of a fire services levy imposed on insurance policies in Victoria was supposed to be a good thing…
Governments still treat insurance as a cash cow
14 May 2012
Governments have become increasingly hooked on tax revenue from gambling, but they don’t do too badly out of insurance, either…
Lessons for brokers from $2.7 million payout
07 May 2012
The award last week of more than $2.7 million in damages against a Brisbane brokerage has again highlighted the need for brokers to take extreme care when assessing and reporting risk factors…
National occupational health and safety plan is a shambles
30 April 2012
The vision of consistent occupational health and safety laws across the nation is in doubt, with WA and Victoria resisting the push to adopt harmonised laws…
Bridgecorp D&O decision: Three challenges under way
23 April 2012
The fallout from the collapse of New Zealand finance company Bridgecorp continues, with legal cases under way on both sides of the Tasman to challenge the NZ High Court decision…
Battered but unbowed – reinsurance capacity remains
16 April 2012
Reinsurers took several large hits from the Asia-Pacific region last year, but have come back for more, with the April 1 treaty renewals proving there is still capacity to support the region…