Recent Posts
Meet the Risks: Harvey Hurricane
Oh, hello… I didn’t see you there. You’ll have to excuse me; it’s hard to see such small beings when you’re this large.
My friends call me Harvey Hurricane, though I often get a different name everywhere I blow. They call me “cyclone” in the Indian Ocean and “typhoon” in the western Pacific Ocean—I assume meteorologists just need to entertain themselves.
Like I said, I’m a big guy. I’ve been known to gust over 160 miles an hour and drop over 2.4 trillion gallons of rain in a single day, but at my core I’m really quite calm. I just get a little excited sometimes.
read moreBuilders Insurance Anyone? White Van Man Is Taking Over
Is it just Insurance Blog or has the whole country gone mad building things?
From the amount of adverts for insurance for builders and tradesman that flood the TV intervals and blast across the radio airwaves during events like football, one could be easily mistaken to believe that the UK was in the midst of some great housing and construction boom where everyone has suddenly put on a yellow plastic hat, white overalls and bought a white van!
Dont forget your public liability! is the battle cry to the Sun reading hoards.
Now dont start on me, the latest Direct Line advert for combined Builders Liability and Van insurance has employed what would only have been described in the 17th Century as the Village Idiot in the starring role.
Stereotypes such as those used by Aviva in its regional ads featuring Paul Whitehouse were bad enough!
read moreAllianz triumphs in annual results rankings
Insurance Times ranks UK general insurers on financial performance
The results are in, the numbers have been crunched and Allianz has triumphed in Insurance Times’ first annual results ranking.
Allianz’s consistently strong performance, with COR below 100% in each of the past five years, helped it to come out on top. RSA in second place and Admiral in third were also boosted by their solid historical results.
The top-ranking insurers table compares the financial performance of the UK’s leading insurers using four different COR measures, balancing short-term performance with a longer-term view (see methodology, below).
In joint fourth place were Aviva, AXA, and Zurich, followed by Ageas in seventh position, and LV= and RBSI in joint eighth.
read moreJustices Hold First Vote Today On Health Law’s Fate
If past practice holds, the Supreme Court will meet privately today to cast a preliminary vote. No one else will be present, and drafts of opinions are likely to be written and rewritten many times in the next few months before the actual decision is issued, likely sometime in June.
The Supreme Court Will Decide On The Health-Care Law Soon. It Will Tell You Later.
If the usual process occurs, the justices of the Supreme Court will gather around a large rectangular table Friday morning and, one by one, cast their votes on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health-care law.
Health Care Spending On End-Of-Life Treatment Is Irrational
Mercury News reporter Lisa Kriegers compelling, poignant tale Sunday of her fathers final 10 days of life and the extraordinary hospital costs they entailed should be required reading for all. For doctors. For hospital administrators. For health care policy makers, both elected and professional. And, although it is painful, for every one of us with aging parents or friends or with a creeping sense of our own inescapable mortality.
Krieger puts it best: My fathers story the final days of a frail, 88-year-old with advancing dementia at the end of a long and rewarding life poses a modern dilemma: Just because its possible to prolong a life, should we?
read moreAEI scholars cited in Supreme Court health care argument
The discussion in the Supreme Court has quickly turned from whether the case can be heard to whether the individual mandate is consitutional to whether the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act law falls as a result of any part being declared unconstitutional.
In one of the most interesting discussions on Wednesday, Justice Samuel Alito asked what the fallback position would be for the rest of the act if the mandate were declared unconstitutional. He then referred to the amicus, or “friend of the court,” brief filed by AEI health experts Thomas Miller. Joe Antos, Jim Capretta and Chris Conover, among others, which contends Title I, mandating the establishment of health exchanges and the means to pay for them, must go.
In response, Paul D.
read moreBudget 2012: Government measures could attract more foreign insurers
But general anti-avoidance rule on tax cause for concern
More insurers could announce their intent to move to the UK over the next year, according to PwC.
The firm’s UK insurance tax leader Colin Graham said the 2012 Budget announced today showed Government’s ambition to attract and retain global companies.
The main concern, however, he said was over the introduction of a general anti-avoidance rule with the need to strike a balance between protecting tax revenues and enabling businesses to carry out commercially driven transactions with certainty.
Graham said that overall the Budget was good news for insurers, as was the move to a 22% corporation tax rate and the intent to reduce that further to 20%.
“The Chancellor referenced the progress that has been made on the controlled foreign companies (CFC) reform debate and the fact more firms are moving to the UK,” he said.
“We wouldn’t be surprised to see more announcements of insurers’ intention to move to the UK in the coming 12 months.
He continued: “The reduction of the higher income tax rate will also help the UK and it’s good news for life insurers that pensions relief is largely being left untouched.”
Anne Hamilton, UK insurance tax leader in Deloitte’s financial services tax practice, said that the insurance-specific measures announced today’s Budget were to be expected.
“For general insurers and Lloyd’s, the announcements on claims equalisation reserves and stop-loss arrangements confirm those already made in December 2011,” she said.
“For life insurers, the main interest will be when the Finance Bill is published next week and the amendments to the new life regime, as published in draft in December, can be assessed.
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