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U.N. chief urges business to take the lead on COVID-19, climate and global recovery

“We count on businesses to play an important role by themselves and to put pressure on governments to do the right thing,” he said. “We need you more than ever to help us change course, end fragility, avert climate catastrophe and build the equitable and sustainable future we want and we need.”

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Mark Zuckerberg defends WhatsApp privacy policy amid India backlash

The WhatsApp policy has now been put on hold till May 15. It aims to share commercial user data with parent Facebook. The Indian government has also written a letter to WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart to withdraw the policy.
“All of these messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means we can’t see or hear what you say and we never will, unless the person that you message chooses to share it and business messages will only be hosted on our infrastructure if the business chooses to do so,” Zuckerberg said.

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Life and health insurance most likely products to see long-term benefits from COVID-19:GlobalData survey

Ben Carey-Evans, Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Business interruption insurance is another product that could positively be impacted by COVID-19. Businesses around the world would have been scarred by forced closures throughout 2020 and into 2021 were they not able to operate. It is likely that the positive impact to this business line will be felt over time, as business owners would be very interested in policies that include pandemic cover. This product would likely have scored even higher had there not been disputes around whether insurers should pay out on COVID-19-related claims.”

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OUTLOOK 2021: Regulatory challenges abound for U.S. insurers as Biden takes over, pandemic rages

While a major overhaul of insurance regulation has been ruled out, and Biden’s primary insurance-related focus is expected to be on healthcare, experts say life and property-and-casualty insurers will also need to prepare for an increase in regulatory attention from the new administration as it rushes to temper the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Investors sue AstraZeneca over share price drop on covid-19 vaccine testingprice drop on covid-19 vaccine testing

In the three days after the release of the test results in late November, AstraZeneca’s stock price dropped 5%, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday by the public employees’ retirement system in Monroe County, Michigan.

Alleging “wrongful acts and omissions” by the company and its chief officers, the pension fund is asking to be allowed to sue on behalf of a class of all investors injured by the share price decline.

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Global insurance industry cross border deals total $5.27bn in Q4 2020

The value marked a decrease of 42.2% over the previous quarter and a rise of 47.2% when compared with the last four-quarter average of $3.58bn.

In terms of number of cross border deals, the sector saw a rise of 47.06% over the last four-quarter average with 25 deals against the average of 17 deals.

In value terms, North America led the activity with cross border deals worth $2bn.

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Record-high InsurTech funding of $7.1 billion achieved in 2020

Compared with 2019, total funding increased by 12%, while deal volume increased by 20%. InsurTechs raised $2.1 billion across 103 deals during Q4, with 67% of the funds attracted by property/casualty-focused firms. Life & health InsurTechs saw a modest decrease in deal share of 1.6 percentage-points in the quarter, and an 8.4 percentage-point decline in total funding over Q3, 2020.

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