Cyber Risk On Global Financial Sector: According to cyber security firm VMware, attacks against the global financial sector increased 238 percent from the beginning of February 2020 to the end of April, with some 80 percent of institutions reporting an increase in attacks.
In a report by Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS), Thomas Kang, head of Cyber, tech and Media, North America said, “Cyber is an existential issue for financial institutions, which is why they invest heavily in cyber security. Determined, unrelenting, cybercriminals crave for cyber intruding armour because of rewards. However, with such potentially high rewards, cybercriminals will also invest time and money into attacking them.”
Business Interruption Rulings Scope: The Financial Council of Australia estimates that the cost to the insurance industry in Australia estimates that the cost to the insurance industry in Australia alone may be Au$10bn, and many insurers there have raised additional cap or increased provisions to cover an expected influx of claims.
Mid-Year 2021 Renewals: Analysts have shared similar conclusions that while mid-year reinsurers rate increases for June and July won’t be spectacular and increases will come in lower than anticipated, they do still represent year-in-year compounding increases across the majority of the market place.
Standing Of Global Insured Weather Related Property Losses: Global insured weather related property losses have outpaced the inflation by about 7 percent since 1950. Of the $107tr of global insured property loss reported since 1990, a third is from tropical cyclones according to Aon data. Nine of the 10 costliest hurricane in US history have occured since 2004, and 2017, 2018 and 2019 represent the largest back-to-back to-back insured property loss years in US history.
Rating Lloyd’s Leading Insurance & Reinsurance Marketplace: Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) has assigned AA- insurance financial strength rating (IFSR) to Lloyd’s, world-leading insurance and reinsurance marketplace. This is in addition to its AA- (strong) stable outlook from KBRA, Lloyd’s financial strength ratings are A+ (strong) stable outlook with Standard & Poors, A (excellent) stable outlook with AM est and AA- (very strong) with Fitch Ratings.
Positive Health Insurance Protection: A malaria vaccine has proved to be 77 percent effective in early trials and could be a major breakthrough against the disease says the University of Oxford team behind it.
Malaria kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa.
But despite many vaccines being trialled over the years, this is the 1st to meet the required target. The researchers say this vaccine could have a major public health impact.
Record Making Flooding In Europe From June 17- Mid July: Latest Aon Catastrophe Report capturing severe flood from June 17-25 and 28-30 in Western and Central Europe will cost insurers well over $4.5bn claims bill. Those affected, Czech Republic (particularly South Moravia). This includes other parts of Europe, with the total insured impact anticipated to exceed $3.4bn. Insurers liability constitute Europe’s costliest in history and fifth globally, surpassing the previous European record of US$4.3bn set by storm Andreas in 2013.
The continuing severe flood in mid July especially in Germany and Belgium is streaming losses that will add to the heavy bill for June flood in Western and Central Europe which is aggregated at $4.5bn. Casualties are over 160 dead and hundreds unaccounted for in the mid July devastating heavy rain.
The severe flooding from July 12-15 in eastern and central Europe according to a report by Aon’s Impact Forecasting, caused parts of Germany gistrcts of Rhineland-palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia to experience 148 litres of rain per sq m within 48 hours in an area that would typically receive around 80 litres in all of July.
Aon’s latest catastrophe report showed that the losses could cost insurers and reinsurers exceeding $1.2bn. With identified hit areas, Aon said the storm and flood damage occurred across Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Henan Flooding, Chinese Government Push For More Catastrophe Insurance Products: The recent flooding in Henan province has caused the Chinese government to direct the insurance regulator to press the insurance and reinsurance industry to focus on new products for disaster risk transfer.
The flooding exposed the current gap between economic losses from natural disasters, catastrophes and severe weather events and the amount actually covered by insurance. The scale of massive gap shows that the economic loss expected to be as much as eight or ten times the roughly US$1.4bn estimated insurance market loss from the event.
