China insurance market growing too fast for domestic insurers to handle

China’s insurance market is experience major growing pains, according to a report from Standard & Poor’s, a credit rating agency based in the U.S. The Chinese market is, by all accounts, enormous and the potential for success in second to none. The full breadth of this potential success, however, is open only to Chinese insurers. Native insurers are now facing demand for coverage that they are having trouble meeting. Many companies, including New China Life, one of the largest life insurers in the country, are plagued with capital shortfalls due…

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NICB announces Q3 increase in questionable claims by 7 percent

The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has released its third quarter 2011 results from its referral reason analysis of questionable claims (QC). This report investigates six different types of claim referral reason categories. They are: workers’ compensation, casualty, property, commercial, vehicle, and miscellaneous. It compared the results among the third quarters of every year from 2009 to 2011. Questionable claims are those that are made to member insurance companies of NICB which must be referred to the bureau for closer review and potential investigation as a result of certain red…

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Insurers spend billions on large weather events from 2011

Insurance companies are continuing to make payments to policyholders who suffered damage from large severe weather events earlier this year. Officials in Missouri have now named the tornado that ripped through Joplin’s center earlier in 2011 as the most expensive insurance event in the history of the state. It has been estimated that insurers have already spent approximately $1.13 billion on claims related to this occurrence, and that when all claims have been made and paid out, that number will have grown to almost $1.9 billion. According to John Huff…

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NAPCO study shows that the U.S. property insurance market is under stress

A new study from NAPCO LLC, a wholesale broker of commercial property insurance coverage, suggests that the national catastrophe property market is quickly moving away from the soft market conditions that have governed insurance prices for several years. While this is typically good news for some insurers, the study shows that a low demand for insurance coverage may restrict the pricing power of insurers. David Pagoumian, CEO of NAPCO, says that property insurers are under heavy pressure to make profits in the current climate and may face even greater pressures…

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Nationwide Insurance reports losses in the third quarter due to natural disasters and poor investment results

Nationwide Insurance has reported its third quarter financial results for this year. The report details a turbulent third quarter, which has been wracked by severe storms and other natural disasters along with costly investment mishaps. Overall, the report shows that the insurer has lost billions in investments and millions in claims relating to storm damage. While Nationwide has an optimistic outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, there can be no doubt that recent events will encourage changes to be made to the company’s policies. Nationwide reports that its…

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