November 2009/5

London market (re)insurers are not expecting significant claims to result from the Russian train disaster last Friday in which 25 people were killed, The Insurance Insider understands.

Outgoing Lloyd's franchise performance director Rolf Tolle has reaffirmed the need for the market to generate long-term profit on casualty business next year, just a month before his handover.

Munich Re is positioned to squeeze out Ergo's remaining minority shareholders after increasing its hold of the German subsidiary of UniCredit to more than 95 percent.

Zurich Insurance and Munich Re are at the vanguard of a public-private network launched to develop insurance products for low-income people in emerging markets.

Glacier Group's chief strategic officer and founding team member, Dirk Turley, and UK insurance branch manager Steven Price have stepped down following the resignation of founding CEO Robbie Klaus.

A study of 11 microfinance institutions with exposure to natural and man-made catastrophes found that they had little in the way of risk management and no insurance to protect themselves or their clients against the impact of disaster.

The efficiency of insurance as a way of leveraging capital means that there will not be the need for as many microinsurance organisations as institutions, according to private equity fund specialists.

Five Ohio pension funds are suing rating agencies Standard & Poor's (S&P), Moody's and Fitch, accusing them of "wreaking havoc" on US financial markets.

Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and Howard Smith have buried the hatchet and settled their long-running legal battles with former employer American International Group (AIG).

The controversial transactions undertaken by Kingsway Financial Services to shed its discontinued subsidiary Lincoln General could push the group into liquidation, AM Best has warned.

American International Group (AIG)'s share price was under pressure following concerns about the sufficiency of its P&C loss reserves.

At the heart of the industry's modest 2009 catastrophe losses is an extraordinarily gentle US storm season.