Tag - insurance

 
 

INSURANCE

Upper House Budget Committee chief Yosuke Tsuruho (right) and his Lower House counterpart, Jun Azumi, meet in Tokyo on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 12, 2025
Medical cap fumble paves way for unprecedented second revision of fiscal budget
While there have been cases of bills returning to the Lower House after amendments in the Upper House, it has never happened with the budget.
"It is an expanding field. We need more people,” said Kaoru Onishi, head of the global product division at Nissay Asset Management.
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 6, 2025
Nissay Asset ramps up hiring as alternative investment booms
Japanese asset managers are trying to boost returns at a time when policymakers are encouraging households to shift their savings to investments.
In recent years, Japanese life insurers have increasingly entered contracts in which assets underwritten by reinsurance companies are invested to obtain higher returns.
BUSINESS
Mar 3, 2025
Japan’s FSA said to examine life insurers’ reinsurance risks
The Financial Services Agency is asking life insurers about the scale of the practice and the type of contracts they have in place.
The government will raise the out-of-pocket expense cap for expensive medical treatments this August as planned, but will reconsider plans for further increases, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told parliament on Friday.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Mar 2, 2025
Japan to reconsider medical expense cap hike plan: Ishiba
The expense ceiling hike is slated to be conducted in three stages from this year to 2027.
Tokio Marine Holdings and other large non-life insurers are facing pressure to sell cross-held shares to improve their governance.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 17, 2025
Japan insurers sell $11 billion cross-held shares ahead of plans
The insurers are facing pressure to improve their governance after regulators fined them for coordinating adjustments in insurance fees in advance for companies.
Leaders of patients' groups submit signatures opposing the move by the government to raise the medical copayment ceiling on Wednesday.
JAPAN / Science & Health / EXPLAINER
Feb 14, 2025
Japan to rethink medical copayment hike amid patient outcry
Many patients, especially those undergoing costly but effective cancer therapy, say a hike might force them to abandon their treatments.
Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance will acquire Banner Life Insurance in the United States as it seeks to expand its business overseas amid sluggish domestic market.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 9, 2025
Meiji Yasuda to acquire U.S. peer Banner Life
Japanese life insurance companies are expanding overseas for growth as the domestic market shrinks.
Homes destroyed by wildfire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles earlier this month. Insured losses caused by this and other fires raging in the area in recent weeks have been valued at over $30 billion.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2025
Fossil fuel insurance is still way too cheap
Despite mounting losses from climate-induced disasters, insurers continue underwriting fossil fuels. Raising the cost of such policies would help cut emissions and benefit many.
Nippon Life Insurance will establish a new headquarters division in late March to manage its foreign businesses, and its overseas insurance and asset management departments will be absorbed into that organization, people familiar with the matter have said.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 27, 2025
Nippon Life to revamp overseas business operations after acquisitions
Japan’s biggest life insurer will establish a new headquarters division in late March to manage its foreign businesses, and absorb related departments into that organization.
Car dealer Toyota Mobility Tokyo and used car dealer Goodspeed are believed to have committed illegal practices, such as discounting vehicles in exchange for buying specific insurance products.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 21, 2025
Japan's FSA to issue business improvement order to Toyota dealer
The Toyota subsidiary and Goodspeed are suspected of illegal practices such as discounting vehicles in exchange for buying specific insurance products.
A street in Pattaya, Thailand
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jan 15, 2025
Thai police arrest Japanese man over ¥1.36 billion retiree scam
The scam involved fraudsters impersonating Japanese government staff to sell bogus health insurance packages, according to the police statement.
Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance plans to raise its starting monthly salary for university graduates joining the nonlife insurer in April 2026 to as much as ¥410,000.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 12, 2025
Tokio Marine to raise starting pay to up to ¥410,000
The insurance firm aims to secure and retain human resources amid continuing labor shortages in Japan.
Rescue workers search a flooded area during the aftermath of Typhoon Hagibis, which caused severe floods at the Chikuma River, in the city of Nagano in October 2019.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change / OUR PLANET
Jan 12, 2025
Disaster-hardened Japan faces enormous costs from climate change
The total cost in climate damages for the country through 2050 could amount to ¥952 trillion if more ambitious action isn't taken.
Houses destroyed in the Palisades Fire along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, California, on Thursday
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2025
California fires expose a $1 trillion hole in U.S. home insurance
Santa Ana winds and wildfires are natural to California, but climate change and human development have made them far more destructive.
Dai-ichi Life Insurance sold about ¥500 billion of Japanese government notes, mainly 20- to 40-year bonds, in the fiscal first half that ended in September.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 6, 2025
Dai-ichi Life takes ¥140 billion loss selling off long bonds
The insurer sold about ¥500 billion of Japanese government notes, mainly 20- to 40-year bonds, in the fiscal first half ended September.
Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance headquarters in Tokyo
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 4, 2025
Meiji Yasuda girds to be more daring in global M&A hunt
The firm’s ambitions reflect bold moves also being made by many of its local rivals, all hunting for growth outside of the country.
Hiroshi Shimizu (left), president of Nippon Life Insurance, and Satoshi Asahi, vice president and future president, shake hands after a news conference Wednesday in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 23, 2024
Nippon Life’s $12 billion acquisition spree is just beginning
Having committed to pouring billions into a pair of global insurers, the firm is now turning to asset managers, as it seeks to diversify business at home and abroad.
Luigi Mangione arrives at a helicopter pad after being extradited from Pennsylvania, as New York Mayor Eric Adams walks behind him, in New York, on Thursday.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Dec 20, 2024
Suspect in UnitedHealthcare killing slapped with new charges
Federal prosecutors have charged Luigi Mangione with the federal crime of murder using a firearm, two charges of stalking and a charge of using an illegal gun silencer.
Rivers and canals meander through many of the townships in Ningbo, with some homes built close to the water.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Dec 19, 2024
Can China shield the biggest uninsured economy from floods?
Only about 10% of Chinese families have a home insurance policy, compared to nearly 90% in the U.S.
Luigi Mangione, 26, at the Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 10. Mangione was indicted on Tuesday for the murder of UnitedHealth Group executive Brian Thompson.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Dec 18, 2024
Luigi Mangione indicted for first-degree murder in CEO death
Mangione faces as long as life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted.

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