The insurance industry, perhaps more than any other sector, is focused on understanding and mitigating global warming, and for good reason: a changing environment could amplify risks, resulting in lower underwriting profits. Yet despite their heightened interest in climate change, few insurers are wholly committed to building a green IT environment.

The operational success of property and casualty insurers (non-life or general insurers) is correlated to the weather. Foreseeing these risks, insurers have enacted premium increases in catastrophe-prone regions, while others have simply stopped writing policies in these markets. However, both of these approaches are insufficient: regulators have tempered rate increases, and while exiting the market may protect against future losses, it diminishes an insurer’s ability to cross-sell other, safer products. Continue reading “Insurers’ IT strategies are not ‘green’– and that’s okay” »

In search of spiritual salvation, adventure sports, heritage sites or even some of the world’s most gorgeous beaches in a country balancing tradition and modernity? Or even elephant spotting? Head India-wise - but you may not be alone.

A new report, Indian Tourism Industry Analysis, finds that in just three years India will see a doubling in the number of international tourists visiting the country.

Continue reading “India Set For 10 million Foreign Tourists By 2010″ »

The industry research company IMS Research revealed that Brazil is likely to secure a large part of the pharmaceutical market worldwide. The country is, among with seven other emerging pharmaceutical markets (Russia, India, Turkey, South Korea, Mexico and China), likely to share a quarter of the global pharmaceutical industry in coming years, as reported by Outsourcing-Pharma.
Continue reading “Government Policy and Growing Economy Will Help Brazil Capture a Large Slice of the Pharamaceutical Market” »

As if the country’s astonishing wildlife, palm-fringed golden beaches, ancient temples and its tantalising cuisine would not be reason enough to rank India amongst the world’s top holiday destinations, the country’s expanding medical industry sees the South Asian country grow even more popular among holiday makers.

According to a recent report, India’s medical tourism market has the greatest potential in the world, enjoying a considerable superiority over other popular medical holiday destinations, such as Singapore and Thailand.

Continue reading “India - Top Destination for Sun, Sand, Sea and Surgery” »

Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer is targeting the disaffected bankers and high net worth clients of the industry leaders, whose brands have been damaged recently by poor performance and questions over their financial strength. This strategy is a wise one, particularly in Switzerland, where wealthy clients are very brand/image conscious.

Julius Baer, Switzerland’s third largest private bank, is keen to snap up disaffected HNWs and bankers from some of the largest private bankers, capitalizing on the recent damage to their competitors’ reputations. Continue reading “Julius Baer targets HNWs and bankers at rival companies” »

Organisations that under-invest in the Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance initiative will fail to reap the long-term benefits SOA offers. This is one of the key conclusions to be drawn in a new report. While technology support will be required, this is primarily an organisational issue with the emphasis on putting the right people in the right roles, and giving them the necessary authority to ensure that the architecture design is kept consistent with business aims and requirements.

Most organisations deploying SOA leave it too late to implement effective governance. The longer you leave it, the more difficult it becomes to ‘retrofit’ governance to an operational SOA environment. However, the effort must be made if the SOA initiative is not to descend into chaos. Continue reading “Firms that under-invest in SOA governance will fail to reap rewards” »

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) says that the majority of banking customers are not aware of the charges and interest rates paid on their current account and are therefore unaware if they are receiving a good deal from their bank, leading to an uncompetitive market. As a result, just six percent of consumers changed their current account in the last year, the OFT claims. However, it may be that the majority of customers are simply happy with their bank and see no reason to change.

OFT’s claim that the availability of information is poor is contestable. Banks do not hide information about insufficient-funds charges from their customers and rates of interest are often the central feature of advertisements for retail banks. It might actually be suggested that consumers consider their own banking habits and pick a current account with this information in mind.
Continue reading “OFT concludes current account market in UK is “not working well for consumers”” »

British consumers are more disloyal than ever before with the retailers they use, according to a new report. Across retail as a whole, some 10.8 million shoppers are disloyal to the stores they use; and, across every retail sector more consumers are saying that they would prefer to use an alternative store to the one they currently use most. The findings demonstrate the extent of the challenge retailers now face in holding on to shoppers, especially in the face of the credit crunch when every customer counts.

Continue reading “Loyalty to Stores Falls to a New Low: a Fifth of Shoppers Would Like to Defect” »

Some of you might recall the campaign I launched in 2001: “Broadbanding local communities”. In all I spoke to over 50 municipalities in an attempt to make them take control over the broadbanding of their local communities. Around the world more than 1,000 local communities now do have at least some form of local broadband. After eight years of experience (more realistically however, more like three to five years of actual implementations), we are now beginning to see some trends in this market.

Continue reading “Trends Emerge From Campaign: ‘Broadbanding in Local Communities’” »

Welcome to the Solar Generation! By September this year, Spain will see power coming from the largest rooftop solar power station in the world.
The Guardian reports that it has a capacity of 12 megawatts of power, and is made up of 85,000 lightweight solar panels covering an area of two million square feet.

Continue reading “Here Comes the Sun - Spain Gets World’s Largest Rooftop Power Station” »