Insurers factored in Salman Khan's likely arrest; denied non-appearance cover for his shoots

MUMBAI: Insurance is the art of factoring in the probability of an event and then taking a call on it.

And, when it comes to actor Salman Khan — he was convicted and sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment in a 2002 hit-and-run case on Wednesday — the industry seems to have stayed ahead of Bollywood.

And, when it comes to actor Salman Khan — he was convicted and sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment in a 2002 hit-and-run case on Wednesday — the industry seems to have stayed ahead of Bollywood. 

The judiciary may have taken 13 long years to come up with its verdict on Khan, but insurers had factored in his possible arrest while insuring his movies. In fact, insurance companies had denied non-appearance cover for the actor in case he didn't turn up for his shoots.

Analysts reckon that Rs 200 crore is riding on his unfinished films, Dabangg 3 and Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. Insurers also said that they would not honour third-party claims since Salman was driving without a licence and w .. 

Insurance policies do not pay third-party motor claims when the person who is driving is under the influence of alcohol. "Salman Khan was driving without a licence and insurance policies do not kick in such a case," said a senior executive of a general insurance company.

Two of his films which are nearing completion — Kabir Khan's Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Suraj Barjatya's Prem Ratan Dhan Payo — would be the worst affected, but would not raise any claims.

"Insurance companies would not insure actors accused in criminal acts," said Sanjay Datta, head of insurance ICICI Lombard.

"Insurance companies would not insure actors accused in criminal acts," said Sanjay Datta, head of insurance ICICI Lombard.

Insurance companies charge a premium of up to 3-5% of the sum assured, which depends on the Budget of the film.

Production houses, which are trying to bring in professionalism into the film industry, have started buying insurance cover for their ventures. So, in case of a cancellation or postponement, an insurance company reimburses the losses.

"Other than traditional event cancellation cover, insurance companies insure losses arising out of trouble in movie release in certain cities," said the executive.

"This cover was introduced in Fanaa, which could not be released in Gujarat," said the executive. 

How Much Is Kim Kardashian's Butt Worth?

Kim Kardashian has allegedly insured her butt for $21million.

The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star is famous for her killer curves, which include a pert bottom that she often shows off in figure hugging clothes.

And sources say that Kim's fiancé Kanye West thought her behind was so important, it deserved its own insurance policy.

"People have always been obsessed with Kim's bottom. Kanye encouraged her to take out the policy to safeguard it in future," an insider divulged to British magazine Grazia.

And it isn't just Kim who's considering safeguarding one of her best assets.

Kanye, who's due to wed Kim later this year, is reportedly also taking steps to look after his voice.

"He is currently in the process of having his voice insured, but thinks it is worth far more than any valuations he's been offered yet.

"Kanye got their broker to value Kim's bottom. Various factors were taken into account, including how much her work is based on her behind and how it would be impacted if it were to be damaged," the source added.

Kim isn't the first celebrity to take measures in insuring a body part.

Reports surfaced in 2006 that David Beckham insured his body for £100million.

Dolly Parton supposedly covered her breasts for $600,000 while Mariah Carey reportedly thought her legs were worth a cool $1billion.

Kim has openly talked about her killer curves in the past, and finds it slightly odd that people are so fascinated by her backside.

"It's kind of weird that people are obsessed with [my bottom] but I embrace it. It's flattering," Kim previously said

Prospect of separate Scottish tax regime stokes business alarm

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Directors of Standard Life are preparing to issue a coded warning next week on the dangers of Scotland’s tax regime diverging from the rest of the UK as business leaders fret over the fallout from the Scottish National party’s landslide victory.

While executives and investors in much of the UK cheered the victory of a business-friendly Conservative government, their counterparts in Scotland were warier of the outcome after the left-leaning SNP won 56 out of 59 seats north of the border.

• Directors at Standard Life, the FTSE 100 insurer, are expected to highlight the importance of retaining a “single market” in UK financial services at the insurer’s annual meeting next week, City sources said, although the comments are likely to be carefully worded.Several business and financial services leaders raised concerns about the chances of a more onerous, more fragmented and more complicated tax regime. David Cameron pledged on Friday to hand Scotland “important powers” over tax.

Standard Life declined to comment on Friday.

Douglas Connell, senior partner at Turcan Connell, one of Edinburgh’s best-known legal firms, said: “In Scotland there is a leftwing agenda that may now be part of the culture. The long-term direction of travel is that Scotland will become a more highly taxed country.”

Alasdair Humphery, an Edinburgh-based director at the property group JLL, said: “It’s difficult to see how a second referendum isn’t closer than it was when this election campaign began. Uncertainty over the future of the union will once again create some hesitation over investing in Scotland.”

• Publicly, business groups including the CBI struck a neutral tone on the SNP’s success, with some executives saying the prospect of Britain leaving the EU was a bigger concern.

But even though the SNP will not be in power in Westminster, some Scotland-based financial services groups that serve customers across the UK are nervous at the possibility of diverging tax regimes for pensions, savings and investments.

Owen Kelly, chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise, which represents the financial services industry, said full-blown fiscal autonomy for Scotland could “raise some of the questions that came up in the independence referendum”.

A wholesale transfer of tax powers would be likely to have “clear consequences for business. They’d have to serve two separate markets, and that would be more costly for customers.” However, he added: “We’re going to wait and see how things pan out.”

One senior Edinburgh-based banker put it more bluntly. He said the “unholy alliance” of the Conservatives and SNP was “a nightmare outcome if you are a Scottish unionist”.

However, Barney Reynolds, head of financial institutions advisory at the law firm Shearman & Sterling, said that compared with the potential implications of a Yes vote in the independence referendum last year, the SNP’s Westminster gains were a “very small deal” for the sector.

“It clearly affects the political backdrop, and that in time could lead to other things, but for now it’s not something that affects financial services location per se.”

Alastair Ross, an Edinburgh-based public policy expert at international law firm Pinsent Masons, said claims that the SNP was “anti-business” were ill-founded. “The party’s track record in Holyrood shows it’s keen to work with business,” he said.

He added that neither London nor Edinburgh could “afford to be dragged into continual dispute. They need to demonstrate that the UK [including Scotland] remains a viable and attractive market place for investment”.

FUNCTIONS AND BENEFITS OF INSURANCE

Insurance has many functions and benefits, some of which we may describe as primary and others as ancillary or secondary, as follows:

•  Primary functions/benefits: Insurance is essentially a risk transfer mechanism, removing, for a premium, the potential financial loss from the individual and placing it upon the insurer. The primary benefit is seen in the financial compensation made available to insured victims of the various insured events. On the commercial side, this enables businesses to survive major fires, liabilities, etc. From a personal point of view, the money is of great help in times of tragedy (life insurance) or other times of need.
• Ancillary functions/benefits: Insurance contributes to society directly or indirectly in many different ways. These will include:              

 (i) employment: the insurance industry is a significant factor in the local workforce;  

(ii) financial services: since the relative decline in manufacturing in Hong Kong, financial services have assumed a much greater role in the local economy, insurance being a major element in the financial services sector;

(iii) loss prevention and loss reduction (collectively referred to as ‘loss control’): the practice of insurance includes various surveys and inspections related to risk management (see 1.1.3(b) above). These are followed by requirements (conditions for acceptance of risk) and/or recommendations to improve the ‘risk’. As a consequence, we may say that there are fewer fires, accidents and other unwanted happenings;  

(iv) savings/investments: life insurance, particularly, offers a convenient and effective way of providing for the future. With the introduction of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes in 2000, the value of insurance products in providing for the welfare of people in old age or family tragedy is very evident;

(v) economic growth/development: it will be obvious that few people would venture their capital on costly projects without the protection of insurance (in most cases, bank financing will just not be available without insurance cover). Thus, developments of every kind, from erection of bridges to building construction and a host of other projects, are encouraged and made possible partly because insurance is available. 

 

Insurance Industry Responds to Heartbleed

What is Heartbleed?

• Heartbleed is not a true ‘virus’, however it exploits a vulnerability in OpenSSL (Secure Socket Layer).

-Used by insurance agents and carriers for TLS email security.

• This affects some websites that display addresses beginning with “https:” – but not all. It allows hackers to more easily steal logins and passwords.
• Most financial institutions don’t use OpenSSL, but many sites like Gmail, Facebook, and Yahoo do.

Insurance Industry Response

• Insurance industry vendors are working to determine if they are affected, and if so, apply fixes.
• You may be receiving emails from your vendor(s) confirming this.  If not, check with them before changing passwords.

What should YOU do?

1. Check whether websites or services you use are safe.

• Review continually-updated lists.  One is at GitHub: GitHub Heartbleed Masstest
• Test the sites you frequent using a Heartbleed testing service. Following are just two of many testing services:
  • McAfee – Free Heartbleed Checker Tool:  http://tif.mcafee.com/heartbleedtest
  • Filippo Valsorda’s Tool: https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/

1. Take steps to re-set your passwords but only once the provider has patched.
2. Keep a close eye on your online transactions (credit card, bank account, and other financial statements).

Moving Forward

Heartbleed is also a clear reminder that you must have a strong ongoing ID/Password policy:

• Change your passwords on a regular basis – every 60 days is recommended.
• Do not use the same password on multiple sites.
• Use strong passwords – Containing 8+ characters, including both upper and lower case letters and numbers, and special characters if allowed (“!”, “$”, etc.).
• Continue to be vigilant – Watch for more news on Heartbleed and viruses.

This overview contains summaries from an article created by Steve Anderson, hosted on his ‘Tech Tips’ website

Insurers See Big Data Replacing Enterprise Warehousing

At our 8th annual Novarica Insurance Technology Research Council Meeting, we had some great conversations about data, both as part of the formal event agenda and also via informal discussions during breaks or meals. Many of the trending or future technologies being discussed (Internet of Things, wearable devices, social media) from an insurer perspective are really just more and bigger channels of data. And just in case you think insurance data is lacking in thrills: my favorite story of the day was about auto insurers looking for fraud or stolen vehicles by integrating data feeds from the license plate scanners used by bounty hunters.

At the analytics breakout session I had the opportunity to sit around a table with CIOs from a variety of insurers of different sizes and lines. One thing that struck me was how much big data and big data technology is part of the conversation. Novarica typically urges caution when asked about big data, stressing that insurers shouldn’t go looking for a use case to fit a technology. But it seems that more insurers are finding the use case which leads them towards a big data approach, and it raises questions about the future of the enterprise data warehouse.

Building a data warehouse with a single data model that supports the whole business is notoriously difficult, with a success rate that drops as the amount of data and number of lines of business get larger, until becoming a near impossibility. A big data approach allows bringing together many different data sources with different structures without having to go through the normalizing and cleansing process that often derails EDW projects. While both approaches have value, larger insurers are discovering the big data route may be their only option for cross-business analysis. And some smaller insurers see this as a way to rapidly gather and review data as well, often running side-by-side with an existing data warehouse. In fact, in at least one case, an insurer’s big data lake has become the first step in the data workflow, with a data extraction from it feeding the older data warehouse as a way to maintain legacy processes.

We’re currently reaching out to the Novarica Insurance Technology Research Councilwith a survey about analytics and big data, so will be reporting soon on just how many insurers have taken a big data approach. But even though we expect the percentages to remain small, it’s clear the growth will continue. The tools and options around big data are increasing and more vendors are providing services that make it easier for insurers to leverage big data tech without having to build it from scratch themselves. In time, I expect to see more insurers running a big data project alongside an enterprise data warehouse, and, in some cases, taking over as the hub of that insurer’s data.

This blog entry has been republished with permission.

Readers are encouraged to respond using the “Add Your Comments” box below.

The opinions posted in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of Insurance Networking News or SourceMedia. 

How Allstate Puts Tech Investment in Motion

Savvy listeners to this morning's Allstate earnings call heard a lot more than just financial-performance numbers. The company's executive leadership demonstrated that technology innovation is driving strategy at a high level.

Not only did CEO Tom Wilson cite the opportunity in the "connected consumer" in noting that Allstate has "three-quarters of a million" DriveWise and DriveSense customers (the former is the Allstate-branded telematics offering, while the latter is Esurance's), but he also said: "We continued laying the foundation to reduce low value added tasks by our agencies while increasing their ability to provide trusted advice to customers."

Translated: We are going to take minor administrative tasks out of our agents' hands and let them focus on more valuable relationship-building. That was confirmed later by company president Matthew Winter, who said, "We are trying to use data analytics, emerging technologies, and centralized support services to pull [certain tasks] out of the agencies."

It's an example of how technology strategy has matured at insurance companies over the past decade or so. Rather than disintermediating agents, the increased ability to use direct contact with customers to automate certain tasks frees up agents' ability to focus on customer acquisition. And, of course, they're getting technology tools to do so on that end.

Another key insight came from Don Civgin, president of emerging businesses for Allstate. In response to a question about raising premium rates on customers, Civgin showed how Allstate made a data-driven decision to identify the source of increased claims frequency and adjust accordingly.

"We did a very intense, deep dive into our business to ensure that the increases in frequency that we’ve seen were proportional across the business. We looked at new and renewal business, higher and lower growth states, and across different rating plans," he said. "All of that review showed that this trend is externally driven by miles driven."

In fact, miles driven were 3.9% higher than normal for the period across the board, according to externally sourced data, Civgin said. And, Allstate was able to use its own data to confirm that because of its telematics initiatives.

"Because we keep our DriveWise device in the car, we’re able to look at that data on an ongoing basis. So we have our own specific proprietary data that shows the trend" toward more miles being driven in a period and corresponding upticks in claims, Civgin explained.

The upshot is that from distribution to pricing, analytic excellence is helping Allstate and other large insurers drive their strategies, confirming that insurance is positioned to become a leading industry for leveraging the full potential of analytics