May 2004/5

Outsourcing outfit Capital Group announced last week that it had tied up a deal with Winterthur Life UK which positions it as the number one business process outsourcing (BPO) operator in the open book life and pensions market.

Despite the risks of criminal proceedings, over 717,000,or 58 percent, of UK businesses have failed to carry out an asbestos assessment on their business premises, according to research commissioned by law firm Davies Arnold Cooper (DAC).

Hugh Stevenson, the chairman of the Lloyd’s run-off vehicle Equitas, is set to join the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as a non-executive director.

The chief financial officer of Swiss Re’s Americas division is taking a US strip club to court alleging it overcharged him for a night on the town.

State-backed French reinsurer Caisse Centrale de Reassurance (CCR) had its AM Best rating upgraded last week from A (Excellent) to A+ (Superior) with a stable outlook.

In contrast to Insider Week’s sister publication The Insurance Insider, analysts at US investment house Prudential Equity believe that the global brokers have only a marginal reliance on so-called Placement Service Agreements for their revenue.

Corporation aims to operate at break-even; Markel named and shamed Lloyd’s has revealed the full cost of a first successful year for its Franchise Performance Directorate in its Corporation of Lloyd’s Annual Report 2003, published last Thursday (20 Ma