Mergers and acquisitions activity is expected to pick up in 2009 as financial institutions look for ways to divest their non-core insurance businesses in order to fund potential capital shortfalls, a consulting firm report says.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Germany's integrated financial regulator, the Bundesanstalt f?r Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin).

Government supports for terrorism risk insurance are growing globally, although some countries provide no backing, according to a study by reinsurance brokerage Guy Carpenter Inc.

Looking over documents that established Starr International Company, Maurice R. Greenberg testified they contained nothing to show that SICO was created to benefit American International Group.

Expanding the insurance industry's workforce diversity, including recruiting and developing more female executives, is not only good politics and good corporate citizenship, but good business, one award-winning woman suggests.

Both supporters and opponents of a new federal oversight system for the insurance sector all found something to like in the Obama administration's white paper proposing sweeping reforms of financial services regulation.

The average total cost of risk, made up of insurance premiums retained losses and risk management administrative costs, fell 9.4 percent per $1,000 of revenue in 2008, according to a survey.

Property-casualty insurers' reserve adequacy "deteriorated" in 2008, ending with a 0.4 percent--$2.2 billion--deficiency that will hurt their earnings, an investment firm said.