27 June 2019 - Preliminary data for 2018 show an increase in gross premiums of domestic insurance companies in most countries, especially in the non-life sector.

This annual report analyses insurance market statistics collected by the OECD to monitor the insurance industry’s overall performance and health. It covers all OECD countries plus selected Asian, African and Latin American countries.

The Australian airline's new scheme launched on Tuesday will give customers 20,000 points for signing up as well as 6,000 extra points every time members have their cars serviced.

One in three motorists pays over the odds for their car insurance - and the worst thing you can do is simply renew. We reveal ten tips to get the cheapest car insurance deal.

Admiral says it is refunding its customers in recognition of the fact that there have been fewer cars on the road during the lockdown and it expects this to result in fewer claims.

Home Secretary Priti Patel slammed 'extraordinary dangerous driving' being witnessed during the lockdown - and motorists are now being warned their premiums will soar if caught speeding.

On average, men pay £581 annually to insurance their motor and women £460, according to comparison website MoneySupermarket.

Calls for the renewal of hundreds of thousands of lapsed insurance policies have begun, reports P Sainath.

In light of the COVID-19 lockdown situation, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) issued a notification on Friday allowing some insurance companies to provide the Aadhaar-based authentication to complete KYC procedure to provide insurance services. "To facilitate

Like life insurance policies which can be paid in monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly modes, soon you will be able to pay health insurance premiums similarly. This has come amid Covid 19 outbreak after IRDAI's call on the issue, when people have been

Maharashtra's Health Minister Rajesh Tope announced that all citizens of the state will be given a free health insurance scheme and will also become the first state in India to provide free cashless insurance to all its citizens. The announcement was

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis brings to light the need to have health and life insurance covers to face unforeseen emergencies. You can take now take advantage of the relaxed rules and options to either purchase a new policy or increase your

AITUC District vice-president S.R. Devadass said though order were passed by the State government for additional incentives for those on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19, this was ‘conveniently ignored’ by municipal officials.

Court confirms award of ₹9.05 lakh to parents of 7-year-old accident victim

I am aged 79, and have been running a small-scale industrial unit in Kalamassery for the past 45 years. I purchased an insurance policy, (LIC’s) Jeeva

Racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive lower-quality health care than whites do, even when insurance status, income, age, and severity of conditions are comparable.

The value of what the United States loses because of the poorer health and earlier death experienced by the 41 million Americans who lack health insurance is estimated to be $65 billion to $130 billion every year, according to a first-ever economic analysis of the costs of uninsurance for society overall.

As millions of Americans have lost their jobs, Congress is trying to figure out what to do to help those who have also lost their health insurance.; Credit: South_agency/Getty Images

Mayra Jimenez had just lost the job she loved — and the health insurance that went along with it.

The 35-year-old San Francisco server needed coverage. Jimenez has ulcerative colitis, a chronic condition. Just one of her medications costs $18,000 per year.

"I was just in panic mode, scrambling to get coverage," Jimenez said.

A recent estimate suggests the pandemic has cost more than 9 million Americans both their jobs and their health insurance.

"Those numbers are just going to go up," MIT economist Jon Gruber said. "We've never seen such a dramatic increase in such a short period of time."

House Democrats introduced a bill in mid-April to help the millions of people, like Jimenez, who find themselves unsure of where to turn.

The Worker Health Coverage Protection Act would fully fund the cost of COBRA, a program that allows workers who leave or lose a job to stay on their former employer's insurance plan. COBRA currently requires workers to pay for their entire premium, including their employer's share.

The Worker Health Coverage Protection Act is one bill being considered as Congress tries to figure out what to do about the very real health care gap for those millions who have lost their jobs. Sponsors of the COBRA legislation say they hope their plan gets rolled into the next relief bill. But it's unclear when, how and whether the problem will get addressed in upcoming coronavirus relief measures.

Jimenez learned COBRA would run her $426 a month.

"I was kind of shocked to hear the number," she said. "That's almost half my rent."

The idea of allowing laid-off workers to stick with their coverage at no cost in a pandemic has clear appeal, says Gruber.

But he warns, "COBRA is expensive, and for many employees, it won't be there."

Only workers who get insurance through their employer are eligible for COBRA, leaving out more than half of the 26 million who have lost jobs in the last few weeks. Many of the industries hit hardest by COVID-19, including retail and hospitality, are among those least likely to offer employees insurance.

And even if someone had insurance through work, the person loses COBRA coverage if the former employer goes out of business.

Funding COBRA costs, federal dollars also wouldn't go as far as they could. Unpublished Urban Institute estimates show that an employer plan costs, on average, about 25% more than a Gold plan on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

"We need to be all hands on deck, spending whatever we can to help people," Gruber said. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be thinking about efficient ways to do it."

Congress has tried this move before. In response to the Great Recession, lawmakers tucked a similar COBRA subsidy into the massive stimulus bill a decade ago. That legislation paid for 65% of COBRA premiums, leaving laid-off workers to cover the rest.

A federally commissioned study found that COBRA enrollment increased by just 15%. Mathematica senior researcher and study co-author Jill Berk said workers skipped the subsidy for two main reasons.

First, only about 30% of eligible workers even knew the subsidy existed.

"For those that were aware," Berk said, "their overwhelming response was that COBRA was still too expensive."

At that time, the average premium for a single worker — even with the subsidy — ran about $400 per month for a worker with family coverage.

"When you're actually facing those choices, choosing between rent and food and other bills," Berk said, "that COBRA bill looks quite high."

Berk's team also discovered that people who reported using the subsidy were four times more likely to have a college degree and a higher income than those who passed on it. In other words, Berk found that the COBRA subsidy was least helpful to those with the greatest need.

Several economists, including Gruber, and some Democrats in Washington are kicking around alternatives to COBRA. Among their ideas is a plan to have the federal government pick up more of a person's premium and other expenses on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Another proposal would extend ACA subsidies to people who earn too much to qualify for any aid and to lower-income people who live in states yet to expand Medicaid.

Compared with funding COBRA, beefing up ACA subsidies could potentially help millions more people, including the pool of laid-off workers who did not get health insurance from their employer.

The ACA ties subsidies to people's income, giving more help to those at the bottom end of the wage scale and spending less on those who are better off. In contrast, the current COBRA plan would cover 100% of COBRA for everyone, regardless of the person's income.

There are some downsides to this approach. Making ACA subsidies more generous could end up costing the federal government more overall, because it gives more help to a lot more people.

Chris Holt from the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, points out that the ACA already increases federal support when people's earnings fall and questions how much more of the tab Washington should pick up.

"If that subsidy would have been good enough for someone six months ago, why is it not good enough now?" he asked.

Maybe the biggest challenge to building on the ACA: The 10-year-old law remains a political football.

"There's just so much both emotion and, frankly, bitterness tied up in debates," Holt said, adding that this makes it hard to move anything forward.

Holt notes that COBRA is not free of political hang-ups either. He expects a fight over whether subsidy money can be spent on employer plans that cover abortion services, for example.

Holt and Gruber agree that perhaps the easiest idea is to leave the ACA alone with one minor tweak: allow people to take the ACA subsidy they're already eligible for and use it on COBRA if they choose.

As for Jimenez, she did not have time to wait for Congress. She brought in too much from unemployment to qualify for Medicaid. And she couldn't afford COBRA, so she picked out a plan on the ACA exchange, where she's eligible for generous existing subsidies. It will cost her $79.17 per month, and she gets to keep her doctors. Not everyone does.

This is the first time she has ever purchased insurance on her own, rather than gotten it through work — and that has delivered one other unexpected benefit.

"Freedom," Jimenez said. "It feels so freeing to take charge of my health care and to know that no one can take this away from me. I don't have to rely on a job to give me what they want to give me. I can make my own choices."

Policymakers, providers, employers and health-industry executives have been fighting over whether the United States should tie insurance to work since the end of World War II.

Subsidizing COBRA preserves the status quo, while doubling down on the ACA might just start to drive a real wedge between work and health insurance.

As states begin reopening businesses, some laid-off workers will get back their jobs, as well as their insurance. But many will remain unemployed and uninsured. A decade ago, faced with the same challenge, Congress chose to subsidize COBRA. It proved to be a narrow solution with limited impact.

Lawmakers now have the ACA at their disposal, a tool that may be a better fit for this moment. Whether they choose to use it may be a choice grounded more in political realism than policy idealism.

Dan Gorenstein is the creator and co-host of the Tradeoffs podcast, and Leslie Walker is a producer on the show, which ran a version of this story on April 23.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

AB 2293 bans drivers from using their personal policies and mandates that drivers have to be covered from the moment they turn on their app and look for customers.; Credit: Photo by Daniel X. O'Neil via Flickr Creative Commons

Amid all the talk about cutting-edge technology, much of Uber and Lyft’s success actually owes to that fact the ride-sharing companies have been able to exploit a basic loophole: The companies foist the cost of insurance on their drivers, but the drivers' insurance companies don’t know they are underwriting cars for hire, and even if drivers wanted to be honest and get a policy that would cover ride-sharing, they couldn’t, because no such policy exists.

AB-2293, introduced by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla (D-Concord) and signed into law Wednesday by Governor Jerry Brown, tries to close the loophole by paving the way for insurance companies to offer hybrid personal/commercial policies by next summer.

Uber once derided the bill as a backroom deal between insurance companies and trial lawyers.

"The bill does nothing to enhance safety, yet compromises the transportation choices and entrepreneurial opportunities Uber offers Californians," the company wrote in a June blog post that encouraged customers to contact their representatives opposing the bill.

However, the company backed down and supported the legislation when Bonilla insurance requirements were lowered.

AB 2293 also specifically bans drivers from using their personal policies and mandates drivers have to be covered from the moment they turn on their app and look for customers, which is a response to the tragic accident on New Year's Eve in San Francisco when an UberX driver hit and killed a six year old child.

Uber argued that because the driver was waiting for a fare he wasn't working for the company at the time, so he wasn't covered by the company's insurance.

The insurance company is planning to make more investments in digital selling and workforce management, thus eyeing the covid-19 situation as an opportunity to strengthen the digital posture than a business challenge.

Quick Claim Settlement will enable the company to settle claims of up to Rs. 20,000/- and release the settlement amount within 30 minutes in customer’s bank account.

The insurance company is planning to make more investments in digital selling and workforce management, thus eyeing the covid-19 situation as an opportunity to strengthen the digital posture than a business challenge.

To tackle the Covid-19 situation, Kotak General Insurance is trying to prepare rapidly, test critical paths and scale up

The insurance firm is looking at ways to expand the business, improve claim processing by going deeper into machine learning and neural networks.

Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance’s Chief Information & Digital Officer, Goutam Datta leveraged technology for enabling all business functions and meeting the digital demands of its employees, partners and customers amid lockdown and enabled new services to prevent any impact on business.

For wealthy Californian homeowners, extra peace of mind comes with a high price tag.

You might get discounts by sharing your fitness data with an insurance company. But they might get way too much insight into the details of your life.

To navigate the next normal, Indian insurers must consider the potential recovery scenarios and act quickly and decisively.

If you have teenage drivers and are trying to live within your means, here are a few tips for keeping insurance costs down.

Not addressing non-financial misconduct may lead managers to fail the SM&CR.

Manifesto includes 37 commitments and 29 calls for action across nine key areas including regulation, broking challenges, Brexit, and transport.

As Biba focuses on improving access to insurance in its manifesto, commissioning editor Laurence Eastham considers where changes will occur in 2020.

The Insurance Age team talk about the top stories for the week.

Too large to benefit from government initiatives but too small to employ their own risk managers, mid-market businesses can inadvertently find themselves taking on unexpected levels of risk. As these businesses grow and face new and increasingly complex risks, expert support is essential, as Sam Barrett explains

Insurance Age content director Jonathan Swift mulls whether insurance broking needs to go back to its beginnings to find the right blend for future success.

The first Diversity & Inclusion in Insurance Awards to be held in November

Research shows brokers pay their non-executive directors 18% less than insurers do.

James Croome, vice president, fine art and specie, Arch Insurance International, considers whether the insurance market is willing and able to support cryptocurrency-related cover.

Manchester Underwriting Management's Richard Webb on how the coronavirus situation could play havoc with the PI market.

Millionaire maker: From setting up one of the first consolidators to becoming an investor in start-ups, Chris Blackham reflects on the highs and lows of selling-up and shares his vision for the future

Effect of storms is feeding through into premium costs.

Customers told to check the validity of their policy with their insurer.

Insurance Cares: Aon and Aviva push to get social landlords to make use of their tenants contents insurance schemes in order to help vulnerable customers, as MPs outline challenges for the industry.

The personal lines specialist has bought the Northampton-based SME commercial expert.

Provider says existing customers will not be affected by the move.