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Eco/Invest/Demography

GIC Re unveils strategies to overhaul its financials and ratings,domestic exposure to Covid-19 claims extremely limited

“We have already addressed the the key issues within our control of profitability and portfolio size We have taken further action to strengthen our balance sheet by increasing our outwards reinsurance purchases on the domestic portfolio by 37.5 percent, growing in size from USD 2.1 billion for 2019-20 to USD 2.7 Bn for 2020-21, using high credit quality retro-cession counter parties,”said GIC Re

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At least 126 killed as Myanmar jade mine collapse buries workers

“There’s no hope for the families to get compensation as they were freelance miners.”

The government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi pledged to clean up the industry when it took power in 2016, but activists say little has changed.
Official sales of jade in Myanmar were worth 671 million euros ($750 million) in 2016-17, according to data published by the government as part of an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

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SoftBank-backed Lemonade raises $319 million in IPO

Lemonade, started in late 2016, says it has digitized the entire insurance process, replacing brokers and paperwork with algorithms. It says it provides insurance policies to homeowners and renters in as little as 90 seconds and claim payments in three minutes.The IPO values Lemonade at $1.6 billion. That is less than the $2.1 billion it was valued at last year, after it raised $300 million in a funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank and which included insurer Allianz SE and Alphabet Inc’s venture capital arm GV. Lemonade has pursued breakneck revenue growth at the expense of widening losses.

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Insurers anticipated a pandemic but could have responded better,says exec

David Williams, managing director of underwriting and technical services at AXA Insurance UK PLC.said the industry’s response to previous virus outbreaks, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, and the H5N1 avian flu strain, was “why we’ve ended up in a situation where 98% of business interruption policies in the U.K. don’t include the impacts of COVID-19.”

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Novartis pays $729 mn to settle US charges that it paid doctors kickbacks

Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in Manhattan called the incentives for doctors “nothing more than bribes” and said federal healthcare programs paid hundreds of millions of dollars in reimbursements for prescriptions tainted by kickbacks.

“Giving these cash payments and other lavish goodies interferes with the duty of doctors to choose the best treatment for their patients and increases drug costs for everyone,” Strauss said in a statement.

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 Cybersecurity top priority for Indian CIOs post Covid-19 pandemic:Adobe

“As we rapidly moved from functioning in an increasingly-digital world to one that is digital-only, CIOs have had to pivot their strategies to prioritise the online needs of their customers and employees,” said Scott Rigby, Head of Digital Transformation, Adobe Asia Pacific.

Nearly 98 per cent of organisations across India have seen Covid-19 impact business functioning, with CIOs facing challenges in helping their teams to communicate effectively and having the right technology deployment to ensure smooth business continuity.

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