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China's online health insurance market is growing strongly. All-sector online insurance premiums have grown at an average annual of 45% since 2013. In 2019, online health insurance premiums were up 92% from 2018, the fastest growing of all business lines. Swiss Re surveyed consumer attitudes towards insurance, finding that more than 60% of interviewees prefer to buy simple and cheap insurance covers online, and health insurance is among the top three product types that consumers prefer to purchase online.

Aon, via insurtech platform Nayms that supports cryptocurrency investors in insuring crypto-risk, is conducting a pilot with Teller Finance, a decentralized lending protocol, to highlight the ability to scale cover efficiently by matching assets to liabilities when underwriting crypto-specific risk. The underwriter for the contract will be Relm Insurance Ltd, a Bermudian specialist insurer. The pilot will mark the first tokenised, or blockchain-enabled, placement of insurance ever conducted with regulated, professional insurance entities.

The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) published a discussion paper on blockchain and smart contracts in insurance which aims to provide a high-level overview of risks and benefits of blockchain and smart contracts in insurance from a supervisory perspective. It found that blockchain has the potential to reduce duplication of processes, increase process automation and efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and improve data quality. On the other hand, it may trigger new risks to insurers, supervisors, and consumers.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) is reportedly studying whether certain stablecoins might be eligible for its coverage. The agency is trying to analyze what so-called pass-through FDIC insurance might look like for the reserves that stablecoin issuers hold at banks. Such coverage would insure holders of the tokens against losses up to $250,000 if the bank holding the collateral were to fail. The FDIC is also looking at what regular, direct deposit insurance might look like for banks that want to issue stablecoins.

On 19 May, Binance customers using leverage found positions automatically liquidated as the crypto price drop wiped out all the collateral in their margin accounts before they could transfer extra funds onto the exchanges. This blog post examines another side of the story - the actual value of Binance's insurance fund and its ability to meet the potential pay-outs on 19 May, had the platform not been closed. I no longer believe the figures that Binance shows on its website for its insurance funds, nor their liquidation reports, and I maintain that a figure of only 3 million USDT for the BTC/ETH insurance fund pay-out on May 19 is grossly inconsistent with the actual number of liquidations on BTC and ETH products on that day. In fact, if the futures platform had not closed, I believe that Binance would have had to subsidise its insurance fund by a billion USDT or more.

"Representations about deposit insurance may be particularly relevant with respect to new financial products or services, especially those involving new technologies such as digital assets, including crypto-assets. New technologies may yield significant benefits for consumers, workers, and small businesses. Nonetheless, especially with respect to new technologies, some market participants may seek to entice consumers to use their products or services by deceptively advertising that uninsured products or services are FDIC-insured. These misrepresentations disadvantage financial institutions that truthfully market FDIC-insured accounts to consumers. Such misrepresentations also harm consumers, who may find that their assets are not insured in a time of financial distress."

The European Insurance and Occupation Pensions Authority (EIOPA) published a feedback statement on blockchain and smart contracts in insurance. The document provides a high-level summary of the responses received from stakeholders during a public consultation on the topic as well as EIOPA's reactions to them. Insurers see potential in blockchain and are exploring possible use cases across the insurance value chain to streamline business and better serve customers, but the technology's deployment is still at an early stage.

There's a huge imbalance between crypto hacker insurance supply and demand, but the $45B Lloyd's of London insurance marketplace is emerging as a major player, as is Aon, the second-largest insurance broker in the world.

This report examines both the benefits and risks big data and AI can bring to the insurance industry. In particular, this reports discusses how the OECD Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence, and the European Commission's Independent High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence's (HLAG AI) Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI should be considered in the context of the insurance sector. The report concludes with policy areas in which policy makers may consider action in the insurance sector in relation to big data and AI going forward.

Hong Kong's Insurance Authority announced on Tuesday that it has granted the first authorization for virtual general insurance under Fast Track. The license was granted to Avo, a local insurtech company providing products like health and travel insurance"

China's insurance market has grown rapidly over the past few years. In 2017, total primary premiums in China hit RMB 3.1 trillion, making the nation the second largest insurance market in the world. Online insurance has achieved even faster growth, with online insurance premiums increasing by nearly twentyfold over the last five years from RMB 11.07 billion in 2013 to RMB 183.53 billion in 2017.

Reinsurer Aon has lined up a panel of insurers to provide cryptocurrency coverage for clients of Metaco, a digital asset custody technology firm. This group of mostly European insurers will offer a crime insurance product to institutions using Metaco's SILO solution for so-called hot and cold (online and offline) wallets.

The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is taking a look at claims by bankrupt crypto broker Voyager that its customer deposits held in an omnibus account at New York-based Metropolitan Commercial Bank were FDIC insured. The FDIC protects customers from losing their funds in the event of a bank collapse, insuring up to $250,000 per account. This insurance, however, usually only applies to an actual bank failure, not upon failure of the bank's client, i.e., Voyager's collapse wouldn't necessarily trigger an FDIC backstop.

A newly formed decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) backed by the Lemonade Foundation will roll out permissionless weather insurance to African farmers later this year. The coalition is dedicated to building and distributing at-cost, instantaneous, parametric weather insurance to subsistence farmers and livestock keepers in emerging markets. The insurance program will be accepting stablecoin or local currency payments from farmers through a decentralized application on the Avalanche blockchain. An initial rollout in Africa is expected within the year, with flood insurance in Nigeria expected to be an initial offering, according to a person involved in the project.

"The face of insurance is changing. Again. Led by data, digitalisation and a need to engage the customer, there are already many shifts underway. This current round of technology-driven change differs from those of the past, not least because of the speed and scale involved. Harnessed properly, these powerful forces offer new hope for the insurance industry to remain central to the lives of its customers. Swiss Re's Sigma report Data-driven insurance, ready for the next frontier? explains what's going on and presents a potential roadmap for progress."

The People's Bank of China e-CNY is reportedly being piloted with Pingan Property Insurance, a subsidiary of China's leading insurer, Ping An. The project involves a new insurance policy tailored to medical workers in Shenzhen's Nanshan district, offering them various levels of compensation for diagnosis of or death due to COVID-19. Applicants are eligible for exclusive preferential allowance if they use the digital yuan wallet to make payments.

Insurtech Lemonade has launched its blockchain- and stablecoin-based parametric climate risk insurance in Kenya's Taita Taveta County. 6,000 insurance policies were issued by the Lemonade Crypto Climate Coalition, constituted as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) on Avalanche, an eco-friendly proof-of-stake blockchain. Farmers sign on their feature phones on which they also pay their insurance premiums using stablecoins or local currencies to cover their entire crop against drought and flood. When the season is over, parametric weather results are gathered and payouts are automatically made to farmers in drought or flood affected areas, with no claims filing process. https://investor.lemonade.com/news-and-events/news/news-details/2022/The-Lemonade-Foundation-Turns-to-Blockchain-to-Protect-Subsistence-Farmers-from-Climate-Change/default.aspx

Coinbase is exploring plans to set up its own "captive" insurance company. At the start of this year, insurance broker Aon began establishing captive companies in the Cayman Islands, working with a handful of cryptocurrency firms. Aon says a captive structure can help firms get access to additional coverage at more reasonable prices.

Cryptocurrency trading platform and custodian Gemini Trust Company announced Thursday that it has launched its own in-house insurance unit to protect client's funds against loss. Dubbed Nakmoto, the unit is a captive insurance company licensed by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. The subsidiary covers losses up to $200 million for customers of the firm's Gemini Custody solution, which is an offline cryptocurrency cold storage service.

The Federal Reserve Board issued a policy statement to promote a level playing field for all banks with a federal supervisor, regardless of deposit insurance status. The statement makes clear that uninsured and insured banks supervised by the Board will be subject to the same limitations on activities, including novel banking activities, such as crypto-asset-related activities. The statement also makes clear that uninsured and insured banks supervised by the Board would be subject to the limitations on certain activities imposed on national banks, which are overseen by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The equal treatment will promote a level playing field and limit regulatory arbitrage... The Board generally believes that issuing dollar- denominated tokens (dollar tokens) using distributed ledger technology or similar technologies on open, public, and/or decentralized networks, or similar systems is highly likely to be inconsistent with safe and sound banking practices. The Board believes such tokens raise concerns related to operational, cybersecurity, and run risks, and may also present significant illicit finance risks, because-depending on their design-such tokens could circulate continuously, quickly, pseudonymously, and indefinitely among parties unknown to the issuing bank. Importantly, the Board believes such risks are pronounced where the issuing bank does not have the capability to obtain and verify the identity of all transacting parties, including for those using unhosted wallets.