Author: completebodyneeds

Spanish insurer Mapfre said on Thursday that losses from the June 24 earthquakes in Venezuela would be up to €25 million ($28.5 million), after its first-half net profit grew 9.4% despite storm-related claims in Spain and Portugal and negative currency effects in Turkey. Growing profits and Mapfre’s $1.54 billion acquisition of U.S.-based Safety Insurance, also announced on Thursday, demonstrate a push for expansion even as it absorbs geopolitical and catastrophe-related headwinds. Storms in Portugal and Spain cost Mapfre about €50 million in Q1, which was absorbed without major difficulty, CFO Jose Luis Jimenez said Result in Turkey was hit by…

Munich Re reported second-quarter proft that exceeded analyst estimates on “very low” major-loss expenditures in its property-casualty reinsurance business. Net income amounted to about €2.2 billion ($2.5 billion) in the three months through June, the Munich-based reinsurer said in a preliminary earnings release Friday. The analyst consensus compiled by Bloomberg had anticipated €1.66 billion. Munich Re’s shares were down 0.2% at 1:32 p.m. in Frankfurt. The company also pointed to a “pleasing operational performance” overall and a “very strong investment result” in the quarter. It said its primary insurance unit Ergo delivered a profit of about €300 million. The earnings…

The United States and more than a dozen allied nations said on Thursday that Russian hackers stole emails from users of the Zimbra email program without having to fool them into opening an attachment or clicking a link. The trick, which cybersecurity firm Proofpoint described as a “half-click exploit,” leveraged a now-patched weakness in Zimbra software that allowed a hacker to compromise it after a user simply opened an email. “No social engineering required,” Proofpoint said in a blog post outlining the hacking campaign. In a 31-page alert about the hacking, police and intelligence agencies from the U.S., the Netherlands,…

U.S. missiles struck targets across Iran, reaching as far as its Caspian coast, on Friday after President Donald Trump vowed “major military punishment” for Tehran and its Houthi allies in Yemen for extending the Middle East war to a second major shipping chokepoint, the mouth of the Red Sea. Two weeks after the collapse of an interim truce meant to end the war, the Iranian armed forces responded by firing at U.S. bases in neighboring Arab countries and warning people there that they may strike non-military buildings used by U.S. personnel. The Iranian army said Trump’s threats only strengthened its…

The twin earthquakes that hit Venezuela last month may have caused $19.6 billion in physical damage to buildings and infrastructure, or about 18% of gross domestic product, according to a preliminary assessment by the World Bank. Almost half of the costs stem from damage to residential buildings, the Washington-based lender said in a report published Thursday, adding that La Guaira state and Distrito Capital that includes central Caracas account for around half of the total damage. The natural disaster, which struck June 24, has resulted in almost 5,400 deaths and 16,740 injured. The two powerful shocks hit north-central Venezuela within…

Safety Insurance Group Inc,, a property/casualty insurer in Massachusetts and New England, has agreed to be acquired by Spain’s Mapfre S.A. in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.54 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, a subsidiary of Mapfre U.S.A. Corp. will merge with and into Safety, following which Safety will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mapfre U.S.A. Corp., and thus a sister company to Mapfre U.S.A. Corp’s other U.S. subsidiaries. Safety shareholders will receive $105 for each Safety common share in cash, which represents a substantial premium of 44% on Safety’s stock price as of July 23, 2026.…

Moscow warned that it is unsafe to navigate in its Black Sea waters after Ukraine has been ramping up attacks on Russia-linked ships in the area. The warning was addressed to all vessels in Russia’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea and cites potential threats from Ukraine’s unmanned aerial and marine vehicles, according to a weekly bulletin published on the website of the country’s Defense Ministry on July 22. The exclusive economic zone is a maritime area stretching up to 200 nautical miles from the coast. Russia’s EEZ in the Black Sea allows access to several national ports including…

Allianz SE agreed to buy HSBC Holdings Plc’s Singapore insurance unit for S$2.7 billion ($2.1 billion), marking a substantial expansion less than two years after another deal in the city-state fell apart. The two firms also agreed to enter a 15-year exclusive distribution partnership, allowing Allianz to provide insurance and other solutions to HSBC’s customers in Singapore, according to a statement released Friday. Bloomberg earlier reported that Allianz was the frontrunner to purchase the unit. The transaction comes after Allianz withdrew an offer to buy a majority stake in Income Insurance Ltd. for about S$2.2 billion in December 2024. At…

This article is part of a sponsored series by OIP Insurtech. New platform automates inspection reviews, bind audits, policy checking, and compliance workflows across carriers, MGAs, brokers, and syndicates. OIP Insurtech has launched Document Intelligence AI, an insurance workflow automation platform that transforms manual inspection reviews, bind audits, policy checking, and other document-driven compliance workflows into continuous AI-powered processes embedded within existing carrier, MGA, broker, and syndicate operations. Every day, policy teams manually review inspection reports, validate issued policies against quoted terms, reconcile underwriting requirements, and perform bind audits before policies are released. These workflows are critical to maintaining underwriting…

A judge rejected Zelle’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said the electronic payment platform’s refusal to adopt critical safety features enabled fraudsters to steal more than $1 billion from consumers. In a decision late Monday, Justice Phaedra Perry-Bond of a New York state court in Manhattan said James sufficiently alleged that Zelle’s parent Early Warning Services “prioritized accessibility, convenience, consumer adoption, and market dominance at the expense of consumer safety” in rushing the platform to market, despite objections from its banking partners. Early Warning Services is owned by seven large U.S. banks:…