Barclay’s Capital, a worldwide investment bank based in the UK, has launched a new initiative that is aimed at providing the insurance industry with added protections against natural disasters. The financial institution will begin supplying insurance-linked securities that will embolden the insurance industry against catastrophes. The new service will help placate the concerns of investors who are growing leery of the insurance industry’s constant struggle with disastrous storms and other…

Cinven Ltd. has announced that it has purchased the life and pension unit of U.K. Guardian from the Dutch insurance company which owns Scottish Equitable, Aegon NV, for $449 million, in the effort to reduce its expenses within the United Kingdom. According to Aegon, which is based in the Hague, by the end of June 2011, the U.K. Guardian unit had recorded a value of approximately $445 million. Its unit…

The Unitrin Inc. insurance company made the announcement that it will be changing its name before the end of the month, at which time it will be known as Kemper Corp. Unitrin is based in Chicago, and in 2002 it had purchased the personal lines business from Kemper, another insurer that was still operational at the time. Today Unitrin has announced that its purchase has become the largest unit in…

Recently, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), a major financial research and analysis company based in the U.S., downgraded the U.S. government debt. The firm now classifies the nation’s finances as having a “negative” outlook. S&P’s actions have spurred the nation’s insurance and finance companies to take another look at their practices and portfolios, keen to spot any compliance violations spawned from the downgrade. The search for such violations has been slow…

Cloud computing is becoming a popular phenomena in the tech world. A cloud-based system allows several people to use and access a multitude of server-based computational resources via a digital network. This sort of computing is appealing to businesses because it enables them to make use of vast amounts of computing resources that speed up their operations. However, many are not taking advantage of cloud computing for fear of security….

Property/Casualty Insurers, a private American company, reported that after taxes, their net income fell to $7.8 billion within 2011’s first quarter from last year’s first-quarter profits which were at $8.9 billion. Moreover, there was a drop from 6.8 percent to 5.6 percent in that insurer’s average policyholder surplus annualized rate of return. As a result of the net income of the insurer of $7.8 billion after taxes, the surplus of…

Medicus Insurance, providers of liability insurance for medical professionals, has announced that it will be lowering its rates in six states across the country – Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and its home-state Texas. The company operates in 24 states throughout the nation. The move to reduce rates is part of an overarching effort to promote their green initiative. In the coming years, Medicus hopes to make each of its…

A California agents group, the American Agents Alliance, is moving forward with an initiative that would offer a discount to consumers who have persistently maintained their vehicle insurance, no matter their insurer or insurance company.  The current law states that this persistency discount is allowed only when the coverage has been continually kept with the same company.  However, the initiative sought by the Agents Alliance is comparable to Proposition 17…