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International News

Typhoon Haishen hammers southern Japan with high winds and power outages

Airlines have canceled more than 500 flights departing from Okinawa and southern Japan, NHK said. Bullet train service in southern and western Japan was suspended, it said.

Japan’s coastguard on Saturday suspended for a second day its search for crew missing from a ship that capsized in the East China Sea last week with a cargo of cattle.

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Total expected onshore U.S. insured losses from Hurricane Laura around $9bn – $13bn:RMS

RMS estimates an additional US$1.0bn to US$2.0 billion of insured losses to offshore platforms, rigs, and pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico, due to wind and wave-driven damages. Offshore losses were estimated using the September 2020 vintage of the RMS Offshore Platform Industry Exposure Database

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Swiss Re retains top spot in AM Best’s top 50 ranking of global reinsurers

The top 10 accounted for 69% of the top 50’s total GPW. In recent years, this percentage has consistently been around 70%, which reinforces AM Best’s sentiment that the industry’s largest reinsurers continue to house disproportionately sizable amounts of risk, despite cedants’ efforts to diversify their reinsurance panels and spread out their counterparty risk.
The top 50 reinsurance groups reported an average combined ratio of 102.4 in 2019, a modest deterioration from the 2018 combined ratio of 100.9. Losses were driven primarily by social inflation in U.S. casualty business and typhoons in Asia, as well as loss creep from 2018 storms.
India’s GIC Re,with a gross premium of $6.86 billion,is the12th largest company(11th in 2018 list) in the AM Best list of top 50 global reinsurers

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Insurers must do more to support COVID-19-related mental health issues:GlobalData

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that 12.8 million UK working days were lost in 2019 because of work-related stress, anxiety and depression. While the HSE has continued to raise the issue of remote-working staff’s mental health during the pandemic, insurers are penalizing policyholders for flagging any related issues. Consumer campaign group Fairer Finance has found that insurers such as Budget, Virgin Money, Beagle Street and Canada Life are actually increasing the cost of premiums for consumers that declare minor stress issues.

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COVID-19 pandemic will push 47 million more women, girls into extreme poverty by 2021: UN

The pandemic will push 96 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, 47 million of whom are women and girls. This will increase the total number of women and girls living in extreme poverty to 435 million, with projections showing that this number will not revert to pre-pandemic levels until 2030, the UN agencies said.

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