Having been a veterinarian and the founder of pet insurance in the US, I generally advise against giving a pet as a gift. Owning a pet is a commitment of up to 17 years for dogs and 20 for cats, and often the recipients decide they’re not up for the job. In fact, many shelters report a surge of abandoned Christmas pets as early as January each year.

There are a host of factors to consider before purchasing a pet. Like: housing, feeding, schedules, training, exercise and veterinary care, just to name a few. B

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Like car insurance, not all homeowner’s insurance is exactly the same. When you come to purchase insurance from a provider offering homeowner’s policies in Kansas other another state, you’ll have the option of purchasing everything from a basic HO1 to a premiumHO5 policy.

The HO1 policy is sort of the equivalent to third-party liability vehicle insurance, in that it meets the minimum legal standard. Normally these policies protect you against 11 specific named threats: glass breakage, smoke, fire or lightning, vandalism, theft, riots, vehicle or aircraft crashes, explosions, volcanoes, hair or wind, and personal liability. Anyth Read more…

Aon Corporation’s risk management business Aon Risk Solutions and ACE have implemented Ruschlikon accounting and settlement standards via The Exchange.

The implementation will augment London market’s e-capabilities and will allow for the notification and settlement of insurance premiums and claims on business outside the bureaux.

The Ruschlikon initiative is a working group of global insurance and reinsurance industry organisations who work together to define and implement international business rules for processing insurance and reinsurance transactions using ACORD standards.

Using Ruschlikon eAccounting solution, the entire UK and international market, brokers and carriers will be able to automate premium and claim processes administered outside of the London bureaux, with quicker settlement times and greater security.

Aon Risk Solutions CIO Ian Summers said with the addition of accounting and settlement messaging using the Ruschlikon rules, The Exchange now supports the life cycle of the insurance transaction process; e-placement through e-endorsements, premiums and claims.

“ACE see a significant opportunity to extend these settlement and accounting benefits to the wider market already connected to The Message Exchange platform and to continue our drive to improve operational performance,” Summers said.

It follows a working group with the British Insurance Brokers Association (Biba), the Institute of Insurance Brokers (IIB) and several comparison websites.

The ABI said the guidance is a prompt for firms to enhance their ability to detect and disrupt fraud at application and should help to avoid accepting customers who are applying fraudulently.

It expects this to complement the established industry capability in detecting fraud when claims are made and added it was another piece of the jigsaw in the fight against fraud.

The ABI also said that the guidance will help insurers, brokers and comparison sites to better identify some of the danger signs of possible fraud at the proposal form stage, such as:

• differing risk and correspondence addresses,• fake and tampered with documents.

The guidance will be available from 27 October and circulated widely via all the trade association and comparison websites.