Source: Business Insurance

June 26, 2019 Member countries of the African Union plan to pool their financial resources to cover disaster risks such as drought, floods and extreme weather, Afrik21 reported. Under the program, South Africa-based insurer African Risk Capacity and its partners will provide insurance, identify the countries’ risk profiles and set up a catastrophe risk management framework.

Source: Business Insurance

June 25, 2019 Several shippers including Swiss logistics giant Panalpina World Transport (Holding) Ltd. said that fuel-related sulfur regulations could disrupt supply chains worldwide due to delays in fuel supply and compliance measures and denied port calls, Logistics Middle East reported. U.K.-based International Maritime Organization is implementing a new sulfur cap on fuel content from Jan. 1, 2020.

Source: Business Insurance

June 25, 2019 Germany’s motor transport authority has ordered automaker Daimler A.G. to recall another 60,000 Mercedes vehicles related to the emissions cheating probe, Engadget reported citing sources. The authority had ordered Daimler to recall 700,000 diesel vehicles in April after the automaker used a software in its vehicles to pass emissions tests.

Source: Business Insurance

June 25, 2019 An expert said that an ongoing strike at the Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile is likely to cost miner Corporacion Nacional del Cobre de Chile $50 million for a two-week halt in production, Bloomberg reported. Juan Carlos Guajardo, an official at Chile-based consultancy firm Plusmining, said that the strike, which began on June 14, could cut copper production by 10,000 metric tons and cause a global supply deficit.

Source: Business Insurance

June 25, 2019 A report by Mexico’s rail transport regulator found that the number of train robberies surged 33% year over year to 1,057 incidents in the first quarter, Mexico News Daily reported. The report found that thieves targeted cargo such as grains, seeds, automotive parts and construction materials with the highest numbers of robberies occurring in the states of Sonora, Tlaxcala and Puebla.

Source: Business Insurance

June 25, 2019 Insurance premiums to cover some oil cargo and tankers sailing in the Persian Gulf have surged more than ten-fold to $500,000 after six vessels were attacked in the region since May, Bloomberg reported citing sources. While the cost of covering the tankers surged as soon as the most recent attacks happened, the surge in prices for the cargoes only happened over the past week.

Source: Business Insurance

Matthew Lerner June 25, 2019 Umbrella and excess liability markets are leading the march upward for casualty markets as rates increase and capacity shrinks, according to insurers, brokers and analysts.Commercial auto continues to be a troubled sector seeing double-digit rate increases and even workers compensation, which has seen reductions for several years, is now “flattening,” sources say. For nearly all casualty lines rates are increasing and will likely continue to rise, said James Auden, Chicago-based managing director, insurance at Fitch Ratings Inc., adding pricing is moving up more “than expected” in 2019. It’s “definitely a hardening market,” said Debbie Michel, executive vice president of risk management for Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. in Boston.Umbrella and excess liability risks have seen the biggest changes as rates and premiums rise and capacity is withdrawn, according to market sources.“Without question, that line has experienced the most dramatic change,” said Douglas O’Brien, national practice division manager for casualty and alternative risk in New York with USI Insurance Services LLC.The umbrella and excess liability market shifted substantially in the past six months, he said.USI’s midyear data shows umbrella and excess liability as rising between 5% and 20% in 2019 after single-digit increases in 2018, according to a recent report by the brokerage.“Where we’re definitely seeing a shifting landscape is in umbrella and excess liability,” Ms. Michel said. The excess and umbrella markets are “increasing at double-digit rates,” which will likely continue in the third quarter, she said. In addition, attachment points are rising and limits reducing, as some insurers pull out of the market.For umbrella coverage, “where $1 million was somewhat the norm, you’re seeing markets say they want to attach at $2 million and higher,” Mr. O’Brien said. And where a lead umbrella limit previously was $25 million, $10 million to $15 million is “the new normal.” “We’re seeing customers and prospects being faced with reduced capacity,” Ms. Michel said. “Lead umbrella might be more like $10 million than $25 million,” she said. Policyholders “are trying to patch together capacity and trying to maintain the capacity they’ve had,” Ms. Michel said. “Sometimes depending on the size of the company, that can be pretty difficult.”The two biggest factors in terms of capacity, Mr. Auden of Fitch said, are American International Group Inc. changing limits and its underwriting appetite in many lines, as well as “a lot of changes in capacity at Lloyd’s.” Replacing that capacity in the market “it’s not as easy as you think,” Mr. Auden said.Larger risk management accounts have been the most affected by changes in the excess and umbrella markets, but the shift has “trickled down” into middle-market accounts as well, Mr. O’Brien said. Another difficult line of business is commercial auto coverage, sources said. “We expect rates to continue to go up” in commercial auto, Mr. Auden said, as even after several years of rate increases, the market remains “unfavorable” with deficient reserves.Commercial auto has been a challenge for many years, with transportation losses driven in part by large jury awards, sometime in excess on $10 million, Mr. O’Brien said. “We don’t see a reversal of that” in 2019, Mr. O’Brien said. At some point, rates will get to levels adequate against losses, but “we’re not there yet,” he said.Data from USI shows primary auto liability up 5% to 10% and sometimes higher in 2019 for accounts with good loss histories and up 15% and higher for poor loss histories. Auto liability “is our number one exposure,” according to Eric Spalsbury, director of risk management in Dublin, Ohio, for cleaning company Stanley Steemer International Inc. Auto liability rates are climbing, Mr. Spalsbury said, with double-digit increases.Even workers compensation, which has seen rate declines in recent years, is beginning to see some upward firming, they said. “Comp has been a profitable line for the industry over the past five years, but it has seen some pretty significant rate reductions,” Ms. Michel said. “As a result, we’re feeling like it’s bottomed out to more of a flattening line now, and we potentially could see upticks.” Mr. Spalsbury said his company’s comp spend has been flat for some three to four years. “Our comp, while it tends to be a larges expense, we’re not hearing a lot about comp rates going up,” Mr. Spalsbury said. General liability is seeing less severe changes than then umbrella risks and auto. “We are seeing a more modest firming in the general liability space,” Ms. Michel said. “GL has been inching up,” Mr. Spalsbury said. “One-offs such as bodily injury, those things tend to be very expensive,” with litigation sometimes exacerbating costs.

Source: Business Insurance

Gloria Gonzalez June 25, 2019 Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. has pledged to utilize 100% renewable power in all global operations by the end of 2022 and to stop writing certain thermal coal and oil sands risks after two years as part of its commitment to achieving the goals of the Paris climate agreement.Zurich is the first insurer to commit to set targets in the framework of the UN Global Compact Business Ambition Pledge that aims at limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, according to a statement by the insurer published on Tuesday. The Paris climate agreement included pledges from 195 political leaders to hold the global average temperature to well below 2 C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C, although the Trump administration announced in July 2017 that the United States would pull out of the agreement.

Source: Business Insurance

Thomson Reuters June 25, 2019 (Reuters) — Hackers broke into the systems of more than a dozen global telecom firms and stole huge amounts of data in a seven-year spying campaign, researchers from a cyber security company said, identifying links to previous Chinese cyber-espionage activities.Investigators at U.S.-Israeli cyber firm Cybereason said on Tuesday the attackers compromised companies in more than 30 countries and aimed to gather information on individuals in government, law-enforcement and politics.The hackers also used tools linked to other attacks attributed to Beijing by the United States and its Western allies, said Lior Div, chief executive of Cybereason. “For this level of sophistication it’s not a criminal group. It is a government that has capabilities that can do this kind of attack,” he told Reuters.Mr. Div later presented a step-by-step breakdown of the breach at a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv in the same session that the heads of U.S. and British cyber intelligence units and the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency spoke. “Right now we’re still tracking them,” he said. “On Saturday we debriefed more than 25 different telcos, the biggest telcos in the world.”A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said he was not aware of the report, but added “we would never allow anyone to engage in such activities on Chinese soil or using Chinese infrastructure.”

Source: Business Insurance

June 24, 2019 Dutch insurer ASR Nederland N.V. is considering denying coverage to gambling companies, nuclear-power generators and armaments producers along with coal miners, Bloomberg reported. Jos Baeten, chief executive of ASR Nederland, said that the proposed ban would apply to new policies and the insurer will continue to cover all of its existing contracts.