TotalEnergies SE is fighting a lawsuit in Paris that seeks to block one of Europe’s top oil and gas producers from starting new fossil fuel exploration and extraction projects. A group of non-governmental organizations and the Paris town hall asked judges on Thursday to force TotalEnergies to do more to fight climate change and limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial times. The coalition of climate campaigners based its request on France’s duty of vigilance law, which requires large companies to draw up plans to identify and prevent a range of risks including environmental ones or face lawsuits. A…
Author: Awais
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration this week fined an Alabama utility contractor $257,700, six months after three workers died from sewage gas while installing sewer lines. Construction Labor Services, based in Eight Mile, near Mobile, Alabama, failed to provide training and emergency response plans for workers in confined spaces, OSHA said in a bulletin. The three men were inside a manhole, doing work for a local water and sewer utility company, when they were overcome with the gas and collapsed, according to the agency and local news reports. The company now has two weeks to pay the fine…
QBE, the global re/insurer, sees alternative reinsurance capital as an important lever to allow the company to deliver sustainable returns in the mid-teens, according to its CEO Andrew Horton and CFO Chris Killourhy, with recent catastrophe bond and casualty sidecar initiatives seen as early deals to help in building a profile within ILS markets.It’s always notable when major global insurance and reinsurance players acknowledge how efficiently tapping capital market investor appetite for more direct access to the returns from their underwriting can help them essentially lever their own balance-sheet capital. One of the key themes resonating through the QBE Group…
Lawmakers in at least eight states this year are aiming to reel in wage garnishment for unpaid medical bills. The legislation introduced in Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington builds on efforts made in other states in past years. This latest push for patient protections comes as the Trump administration has backed away from federal debt protections, health care has become more costly, and more people are expected to go without medical coverage or choose cheaper but riskier high-deductible insurance plans that could lead them into debt. “In the wealthiest country on Earth, people are going bankrupt,…
Erie Insurance said Tim NeCastro, president and chief executive officer, will retire on Dec. 31 after 10 years leading the company. NeCastro, who was named CEO in 2016, led the company’s growth to nearly $13 billion in premium and more than 7 million policies in force while maintaining strong financial performance. Erie, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2025, said NeCastro’s leadership emphasized care for employees, agents and customers while reinforcing ERIE’s values and promise of service. “Tim has led the organization with extraordinary kindness and humility,” said Tom Hagen, chairman of the board. “He has been a consistent model…
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced her office has secured a consent judgment against a Michigan construction company for accepting deposits for construction projects that were never finished and then failing to return the funds. Nessel filed a lawsuit last year against Hummingbird Construction Co., LLC and its owner, Matthew Ashline, for violating the Michigan Consumer Protection Act. The company allegedly collected deposits from customers in St. Clair, Monroe, Eaton and Washtenaw Counties to begin construction projects but failed to initiate the contracted work. In multiple cases, despite repeated requests from the consumers for refunds, Ashline delayed repayment or failed…
The drugstore retailer said it was simplifying its organization to speed up decisionmaking in a move impacting at least 600 workers.
Palantir Technologies Inc.’s surprise announcement that it’s moving from Denver to Miami is even more surprising because, at least initially, it’s going to be anchored at a co-working space. A regulatory filing lists the company’s “principal executive offices” at an Industrious co-working location in Aventura, about 17 miles north of downtown Miami, suggesting the headquarters transition may be unfolding in stages as longer-term plans take shape. The data-analytics firm, which was recently noted for its work in developing a Lloyd’s syndicate, revealed the move on this week, offering few details beyond a post on X which read: “We have moved…
This edition of International People Moves details appointments at Aon plc and Arch Insurance International. A summary of these new hires follows here. Aon Promotes Fraccalvieri as CEO of Global Facultative Re, Succeeding Laing Insurance broker Aon plc announced that Nick Fraccalvieri has been named CEO of global facultative for Aon’s Reinsurance Solutions, effective March 1, 2026. Nick Fraccalvieri Fraccalvieri joined Aon in 2023 to lead the firm’s EMEA facultative reinsurance operations, bringing with him more than 25 years’ industry experience, having held a range of senior leadership roles across regional and international markets. Since joining Aon, he has led…
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is focused on addressing “fraud, waste and abuse” in health programs including Medicaid. Efforts span across different types of health coverage and across all provider and service types. In November 2025, CMS issued a letter to states describing opportunities for federal and state governments to work collaboratively. Efforts to address fraud, waste and abuse are not new. The Center for Program Integrity (CPI), within CMS, was established in 2010 to coordinate program integrity efforts and move from a “pay and chase” model to higher reliance on data analytics to detect and prevent fraud. CPI…
AM Best said the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against President Donald Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs will help to “ease uncertainty across the insurance industry.” “Managing through unknowns is a challenge to any industry and most observations and segment analysis in the past year on the insurance industry has included a ‘wait-and-see’ caveat related to the impact of tariffs,” said Sridhar Manyem, AM Best senior director of industry research and analytics, in a statement released shortly after news broke Feb. 20 of the justice’s 6-3 ruling. Related: US Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Global Tariffs “For insurance in particular, the…
Qumis, a lawyer-built AI-driven platform for commercial insurance coverage intelligence, announced a $4.3 million oversubscribed seed round led by MTech Capital, with new strategic investor American Family Ventures and participation from all prior investors. Total funding reaches $6.75 million. The Chicago-based insurtech said it will deploy the capital to expand its go-to-market team and deepen product capabilities as demand grows from large brokers, carriers, and coverage-focused law firms. Qubis’ platform combines proprietary document processing with multi-stage legal reasoning trained on thousands of real-world coverage analyses. Qumis previously raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding. Topics InsurTech Tech Was this article valuable?…
Members Capital Management Limited (MembersCap), the Bermuda-regulated investment manager, has broadened its tokenized reinsurance fund distribution by making its listed insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund, MCM Fund I, available to institutional investors on the Aptos blockchain via the Archax digital asset exchange.This comes as Archax, the UK/EU regulated digital asset platform, has entered into a partnership with Aptos, a institutional Layer-1 blockchain, which allows Archax to be able to bring Aptos into its tokenization engine, which enables regulated real-world assets (RWAs) to be issued and managed through the Aptos blockchain. The first of which will be the MembersCap Tokenized Global Reinsurance…
Subsidies. Love ’em or hate them, they dominated the news during the Affordable Care Act’s sign-up season, and their reduction is now hitting many enrollees in the pocketbook. While lawmakers continue to disagree on a way forward, and the politics of affordability keeps the issue front and center, it would be understandable to think these are the only taxpayer-funded health insurance subsidies in the U.S. system. But that would be wrong. “The vast majority of people with health insurance get some kind of federal subsidy for it, from Medicaid to Medicare to the ACA to employer-sponsored insurance,” said Larry Levitt,…