Georgia Insurance

Four months after suffering heavy losses in the terrorist attacks in the USA, Lloyd’s of London, one of the oldest and biggest names in the insurance sector, yesterday proposed radical changes intended to more competitive.

Without reference to attacks that cost £ 1.9 billion ($ 2.7 billion), more than any other insurer Lloyd’s, said he hoped that the new accounting procedures and the progressive reduction of its more than 2000 individual investors, or name, as they are known, to firms in favor of investors, who now represent the bulk of the organization’s capital.

”Our objectives are profitability, modernity and transparency,’’said Sax Riley, the chairman of Lloyd’s. Lloyd’s investors are invited to the approval of amendments to a vote expected to take later this year.

The announcement came, as the public insurance regulatory authorities sectoral experts to Washington to promote the federal Congress to back a lock for industry losses against other terrorist attacks.

The attacks shook the industry, with losses estimated at around 50 billion dollars. Prices rose as the industry has tried to relax. The insurers have also cut back sharply on insurance.

The insurer said the Congress after the attacks, they were unable to provide coverage against terrorism, because the risk was too unpredictable and potentially costly. And in collaboration with major property owners and bankers, they warned that terrorism, lack of insurance would have stopped to credit and construction.

But the congress, are in a multitude of proposals, interrupted end of December, without measures.

The crisis has no plans to develop and many regulatory authorities and insurance companies fear that Congress loses interest.

The Bush administration, one of the leading advocates of the insurer prefers always supported. In a conference call with dozens of executives and industry leaders on January 7, White House officials asked for evidence of economic disruption which may be Congress.

At the hearing yesterday, Chris Treanor, a general of Marsh Inc., the largest insurance broker, said that price increases for large companies things for customers were on average 70 per cent 80 percent across the country, with some companies pay as well as four times what it did last year. He said that even if some of coverage against terrorism was available, most large companies have not been able to cover.

In counterpoint proposals that were presented so far Congress, EW Blanch Jr., the former chief executive of insurance brokerage business of a company founded by his father, and now known as Benfield Blanch, suggested that the state authorities contributing to create perhaps one of pools of $ 25 billion to 50 billion dollars in private funds to demonstrate the commitment of the industry.

The pool will be financed by private funds immediately in writing coverage for terrorism, “said blanch, with the hope that Congress would agree to say that the responsibility for losses incurred on capital funds.

The proposal, unlike the previous ones, as it was a consortium of states and the private sector, but rather a new, created by the Federal Insurance Court mechanism, Congress has resisted. And that, insurers and investors, who for many more losses than other plans.

The industry and the Bush administration had proposed that insurers responsibility for the first $ 10 billion in losses, and several senators have expressed support for this concept.

The industry was crucial House bill approved for loans from the Confederation to support the insurer to pay terrorism losses.

John W. Oxendine, insurance commissioner for Georgia, requested that the hearing, and a few others to the regulatory authorities, said she thought Mr. Blanch, a master plan, support in Congress.

”It is a starting point,”Mr. Oxendine said in an interview during a break in the hearing. ”I think people of Congress are good, intelligent man. But they are not for the treatment of insurance. Maybe we need for something together and wrap them in a package and present it to them.