June 2010/4

Bermudian Aspen Insurance Holdings is to deliver on plans to expand its UK arm after securing the services of Fusion founders Kevin Pallett and Geoff Crisp to build its presence in the country.

Troubled Canadian insurer Kingsway Financial Services (KFS) is to sell its specialist US motor insurer Mendota Insurance Company, as part of its asset disposal programme and a re-focusing on profitable lines of business.

The London market has a "huge opportunity" to make itself the market of choice for the liability programmes of major corporates and financial institutions, according to a senior Marsh executive.

The Caribbean, the west coast of North America, Chile, Indonesia and Japan are the areas most at risk from mega-earthquakes of magnitude 8+, according to research by Aon Benfield.

The US judge presiding over Allen Stanford's criminal case has ordered that sealed documents alleging that his lawyers engaged in insurance fraud be released to London underwriters embroiled in a separate coverage dispute.

Expansive broker AJ Gallagher has completed a hat-trick of June purchases with the acquisition of regional US retail insurance broker Bowen, Miclette, Britt & Merry (BMBM) of Arkansas.

The UK insurance industry will closely monitor tomorrow's emergency budget amid growing expectation that Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will boost government coffers by hiking the rate of insurance premium tax.

Following its merger with US wholesaler Swett & Crawford, the new Cooper Gay must surmount a series of obstacles if it is to list - not least a debt-laden balance sheet, according to market sources.

The current soft market may not follow the same pattern of previous underwriting cycles, a panel of senior industry executives told the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers (Airmic) conference last week.

State-owned insurers in Florida have hurricane exposures upwards of $2.5tn, according to a recent report produced by the research arm of the US Congress.

Plans to reorganise the regulation and supervision of UK financial services announced last week have met with a defensive reaction from UK insurance trade bodies eager to avoid additional cost burdens.

UK (re)insurers are to come under the regulatory control of a new subsidiary of the Bank of England (BoE), provisionally entitled the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), it emerged last week.