The legislatures of Venezuela, Guatemala and Nicaragua have each recently approved new laws governing the activities of insurers, reinsurers and (re)insurance intermediaries concerning risks located within the respective countries.
Read MoreInsurance premiums in Argentina rose 8.8% to 36.12 billion pesos (US$ 9.2 billion) in the 12 months to the end of June, the Argentine insurance superintendency (SSN) has reported. The total in June 2010 was 3.12 billion pesos (US$ 793 million), an increase of 5.9% from May and 16.5% from June 2009.
Read MoreIn the days after the January earthquake in Haiti, some staggering numbers were reported in the media. There was approximately $14 billion in property damage, most of which occurred in Port-au-Prince, the largest city in Haiti, and 250,000 people were killed, either directly or indirectly, by the earthquake.
Read MoreInsurers and reinsurers are continuing to revise upwards their loss estimates for the Chile earthquake which struck on February 27, with industry totals now surpassing $6 billion.
Read MoreEAPD’s Mark Meyer and Brian Green are attending the Aviation Insurance Association’s Annual Conference in Vancouver, Canada. The conference is well-attended and informative. There were several interesting CIE sessions on Sunday, including a discussion of the criminalization of aviation accidents. Our speaker explained that the trend is that in Europe and Latin America, investigations into accidents also often included criminal investigations, and sometimes indictments, of the pilots, flight controllers and others who were claimed to be involved in the accident.
Read MoreAs a region, Central American (including Panama) insurance premiums rose 8.1% when comparing Q1 2010 to Q1 2009, totaling US$ 529 million during the first quarter of 2010. Premiums for Costa Rica’s Instituto Nacional de Seguros, effectively still a monopoly holder in the market for the time being despite recent regulatory changes, rose 16.6% for the period.
Read MoreIn July 2009 in New Castle County in the State of Delaware, three separate plaintiffs filed civil suits against E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company, Inc. (“DuPont”) alleging that their work at a DuPont textile plant in Mercedes, Argentina from 1961 to 2002 caused them to be exposed to and inhale asbestos fibers.
Read MoreProspects are mixed for the Central American insurance sector in 2010, according to a study by Fitch Ratings, with countries such as Costa Rica expected to build on their healthy growth in 2009 while others struggle to recover from the global downturn.
Read MoreIRB Brasil Ressegurous SA v CX Reinsurance Company Ltd [2010] EWHC 974 (Comm) concerned an appeal brought by IRB in relation to an arbitration award made in favour of CX Re and against IRB. The claims arose from losses occurring in the 1970s and 1980s which were later settled by insurers, including CX Re.
Read MoreIn speaking with our insurance and reinsurance clients, one frustration that has been consistently mentioned is the difficulty of effectively monitoring legal and regulatory developments in the various countries in Latin America. We have therefore recently launched a Latin American (re)insurance regulatory service to assist companies in overcoming this hurdle in a cost-efficient manner.
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