Sri Lanka's insurance industry will likely see an up tick in merger, acquisition and consolidation activity in the coming years, particularly in the country's general insurance sector, as the market's smaller companies contend with new government requirements that mandate a separation of life and non-life business into two separate entities by 2015. A new report published last month by domestic…

As India's burgeoning insurance market continues to grow, fraud and other nefarious business practices have become more widespread, and this will likely necessitate further industry reforms on behalf on the South Asian country's insurance regulator going forward. A new study released this week by Pune-based accounting firm Indiaforensic revealed that India's insurance companies incurred over INR300…

A new report published this week by Standard & Poor's (S&P) Ratings Services, the foremost worldwide insurance rating and information agency, argues that the persistent flooding that took place in Thailand late last year could pose much larger losses for both pan-Asian insurers and the local market than early risk-model indicators initially forecast. The rating agency now estimates that the current…

Expatriate employees around the world will soon have access to a new highly-flexible international health insurance product. Allianz Worldwide Care and Pacific Prime Insurance Brokers have teamed up to develop a brand new 'Dormancy' policy option, which for the first time will enable Allianz international health insurance policyholders to freeze their individually funded health cover whilst they are…

The cost of private health insurance in Australia is due to rise by an average of 5.06 percent across the board this year after the government approved the latest round of premium hikes by local insurers. This rate increase will translate to roughly an additional AU$70 a year for individual policyholders with typical hospital cover and AU$150 for families based on 2011 Health Department figures for…

Malaysian insurance company Syarikat Takaful Malaysia Bhd (STMB) has posted another year of strong business growth in their most recent financial statement, providing further evidence of the rapid development of the Islamic finance sector in South Asia In their annual report released last week, Syarikat Takaful Malaysia revealed that pre-tax profits…

Prudential PLC, Britain's largest insurer by market value, has hinted that they may move headquarters from London to Hong Kong in order to escape Europe's upcoming Solvency II capital requirements and focus more on Asian business development. The UK media was abuzz over the weekend on news that Tidjane Thiam, Prudential Chief Executive, had ordered a review of the company's domicile situation, with…

AIA Group Ltd, Asia's third largest insurer by market value, has posted a stronger than expected rise in new business value for 2011, driven by sustained premium income growth in Malaysia, Singapore and China over the past year. The Hong Kong-based insurance giant has been able to build on the strong sales momentum throughout the year to provide life insurance protection and savings solutions to an…

The Vietnamese government passed through the insurance market development strategy for 2012-2020 this past week. The initiative aims to gradually spur the domestic insurance market from a base of 1.6 percent of Vietnam's GDP in 2010 to 2-3 percent of GDP by 2015 and then hopefully up to 3 or 4 percent of national GDP by 2020. The Vietnamese insurance industry has grown at a brisk pace in recent years,…

China's two-decade long rapid economic ascent has lifted over a hundred million people out of poverty and has now placed considerable pressure on the state to update it's infrastructure and social care network in order to keep pace with the population's remarkable growth in prosperity. The Chinese government has taken some notable steps on this front, introducing a far-reaching social…