Risk, Re-/Insurance and Future Thinking
From the category archives:
AON are warning that fraud is on the rise and that insurance is going to face increasing claims from environmental threats, terrorism and product recalls. They also think nano-tech is going to bite insurers. I’d agree with fraud. Longer term, I think the environment is going to be an issue — it already is, obviously — [...]
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It’s deja vu all over again, at least for those of us who remember the last Big Recession. The FSA has been reviewing advice given to customers wanting to switch into a personal pension or SIPP. Having looked at 500 cases across 30 firms, they found that 16% of clients had received unsuitable advice. [...]
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Amidst all the doom and gloom, the early trains into the City packed with office workers keen to be seen to be keen, the belt-tightening, expense-cutting, travel-slashing and so forth, it’s occasionally worth remembering that there are different perspectives. Here’s Steve Jobs on how Apple chose to get through the last downturn: We’ve had one of these [...]
A lecture given by Dr Lawson Brigham At the Institute of Marine Engineering Science & Technology (IMarEST) 8 September 2008 Please note that these are not authorised notes, but simply the result of my jottings at great speed during this fascinating talk. I may not have taken certain things down entirely accurately, though I think the broad thrust [...]
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Infectious prions–the things that cause BSE–can not only jump species barriers, but can also create new, potentially harmful prions in the infected host. That is the finding of recent research at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Nature reports that Generally, prions are limited to a specific host and a few related species. But [...]
The Guardian reports on a Ryanair emergency landing which put 16 in hospital in Limoges. Most people, I think, while scared witless, would probably expect that every so often this sort of thing “just happens”. What is markedly less reassuring, somehow (though I can’t quite put my finger on why) is that few of the [...]
Excellent LRB article this week from Michael Kare, “professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College”[1] all about the world’s continuing, in fact growing dependence on oil - “the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that global consumption will rise from 86.9 million barrels a day in 2008 to 94.1 million in 2013.” Professor Kare [...]
–Begin Daily Mail rant– More ridiculous politically-correct nonsense from HM Government (following the Abu Qatada debacle). This time, according to the Times: THE Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights. [...]
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Between 2004 and 2007, fraudulent applications for financial products rose by 25% (to 77,000). In 2007 one in five of those was successful. The Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance System (Cifas), which conducted the study, pointed to two drivers for this. First, inexpensive, high-quality printing technology has made it easier for people to fake supporting documents, [...]
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I am staggered by this. According to the British Lung Federation: Less than a third of tradespeople are aware asbestos exposure can cause cancer Only 12% of tradespeople know asbestos exposure can kill them Nearly a third (30%) wrongly believe most asbestos has been removed from UK buildings Three quarters (74%) have had no training in how to [...]
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