Insurance

Five strategies that insurers can use to cut friction from the customer journey as they work towards digitally transforming their business.

Suddenly the metaverse is everywhere. Ok, the concept of the metaverse is everywhere – thanks to Mark Zuckerberg’s October 28 announcement that “Facebook” has become “Meta.”

Lemonade Car, a telematics auto insurance product, is now live in Illinois and will roll out across the U.S. soon.

Success demands an innovation-driven formula with four main components: speed, accuracy, scale and customer experience. To do this and change the economic equation, here are five efficiency strategies recommended by Verisk.

Nationwide’s Sarah Jacobs, vice president of personal lines product development, spoke with Digital Insurance about a recent survey on smart home devices and the future of IoT at Nationwide.

After leaving Aon in 2008, he started Ryan Specialty Group Holdings Inc. and has pursued acquisitions to build the firm into one of the largest of its kind. Chicago-based Ryan Specialty -- with 3,300 employees and a market value of almost $10 billion -- offers products and services to insurance brokers and agents to help protect against risks, including cybercrime and climate-related hazards.

The impending loss and federal probe are the latest blows for embattled PG&E. The company incurred a $1.09 billion third-quarter loss because of bankruptcy costs, state-mandated contributions to a wildfire-insurance fund, prior fire-season damages and other costs, according to a statement.

B2B payments represent the last mile for insurance carriers — the final step that must be integrated and digitized to achieve the industry vision of straight-through processing (STP). And the likely starting point for STP is auto claims, which represent nearly half of all P&C claim volume.

French lender La Banque Postale is offering to buy the shares it doesn’t already own in CNP Assurances, valuing the firm at some $17 billion in what stands to be the largest takeover of an insurer this year.

China Life Insurance Co. posted a drop in third-quarter profit as a slowing economy weighed on the nation’s largest life insurer.

In other news: Zurich releases cyber risk survey results; Hertz and Uber to add 50,000 Teslas to network; Amica selects Shift Technology.

Keynova Group, a financial services intelligence firm specializing in benchmark insights, released its 2021 Small Commercial Insurance Scorecard report, which evaluates the small commercial insurance digital capabilities of the 10 largest U.S. carriers.

About four in 10 executives cited technology as their company’s greatest challenge, twice as many as in 2019, according to a new survey from LIMRA and Boston Consulting Group.

Tesla jumped as much as 6.7% to a record high of $970.84 in New York, before paring gains to 4.4%, with the company’s market valuation around $955 billion.

That’s the takeaway from an Aon Plc survey of 2,344 risk managers, chief risk officers and chief financial officers conducted in the second quarter. Cyber attacks were the No. 1 most-cited hazard, and more than half of the Top 10 risks executives say they face today are tied to the pandemic, according to survey results released Tuesday.

The change is effective Jan. 1, when Lyons will move to the newly created role of executive vice president, global chief actuary and head of portfolio management, the New York-based insurer said in a statement Monday.

At this point in the insurance sector’s lifecycle, change is inevitable. Now more than ever, especially with the rise of technology and insurtechs, competition in the space is cutthroat. And that is why first and cheap are no longer going to cut it.

Insurance blockchain working group The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative has partnered with Trustlayer to build out an insurance verification proof of concept.

Activist investor Starboard Value disclosed a new position in Willis Towers Watson Plc Thursday, and said it believes the insurance broker could nearly double its share price in the next three years.