Insurers under pressure from natural disasters

The recent floods have raised the cost of home repairs, which could affect the profitability of insurers.
Insurers are facing pressure from their reinsurers during margin negotations.
Some analysts believe the reinsurers might tighten some of their coverage or reduce their levels of reinsurance.
Despite the pressure on their margins, insurers can still increase their customers’ premium rates to cushion the impact of the rising costs.
Since February, Australia’s east coast has been ravaged by flooding. It’s estimated that the damage caused by the disaster could reach $3 billion.
According to a consumer advocate, the cost of home repairs has been significantly higher than the official inflation rate.
If you’re planning on making a claim for home repairs, the cost of these expenses will be significantly higher than it was last year.
Reinsurance companies in Australia offer their customers a type of cover known as aggregate cover, which allows them to switch on their coverage following a series of smaller natural disasters. However, this type of cover has become uneconomic for most of the firms due to the number of major weather events that have affected various parts of the world.
Some local insurers might choose to increase their insurance prices due to the increased catastrophe risk they face.
Analysts noted that the rising cost of capital has been passed on to the insurers. This could mean that the premium rates for individual policies would increase.The capacity for volatility management products would be reduced.
Before the floods, Suncorp claimed that its cost-saving measures had helped offset the rising prices of home repairs. However analysts noted that the company was now facing a serious challenge due to the rising prices of various goods and services.
Concerns about the rising cost of insurance have prompted many consumers to ask about the affordability of their policies. The rising inflation could make them more sensitive to the premium increases.
It is unlikely that the insurance industry would be able to sustain its impressive top-line growth rate due to the rising costs and the recent natural disasters.
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Quantum Computing growing quickly

Quantum computers have captivated scientists for decades, and now they are starting to attract the attention of investors.
With just over a year left in 2018, it has already been estimated that over a billion dollars worth of private money has been poured into quantum computing.
This is largely due to the immense growth of the quantum computing industry. According to a study conducted by McKinsey, the number of startups in the space has increased significantly over the years.
Quantum computers are expected to become more powerful and useful in the future. In 2018, IBM unveiled a strategy to develop a 64-qubit processor that will be used in 2023.
ColdQuanta’s processor is capable of processing up to 100qubits.
Despite the hype, quantum computing is still far from being mainstream. Its early days were spent on finding initial use cases and scaling the technology to commercial levels.
Quantum computers are equipped with quantum bits, which are bits that are basically the same as the bits found in standard computers. With the added capacity to store large amounts of data, they’re capable of carrying out complex calculations that are impossible to perform using current machines.
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to transform almost every industry, from drug design to transport and energy.
Quantum bits are incredibly hard to manipulate. In order to make them work properly, they need to be built at a large scale. Currently, most companies in the space are still trying to make computers that can run at a massive scale.
Although the concept of quantum computing is still years away, businesses are still exploring the potential of this technology for their operations.
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Gaming Driving Network Use

In a surprising result that no one expected, Australia’s gaming community has become more consumers of internet data than Netflix subscribers according to Optus and Telstra.
With many people locked down at in their homes, many have turned to entertainment at home which is mostly gaming and television since most other favourite past times like sport has also been cancelled.
Many games such as Fortnite, League of Legends and Call of Duty have a high bandwidth requirement, so much so that Communications Minister Paul Fletcher made a direct request to gaming companies to assist the NBN Co in managing the level of consumer demand.
According to Optus Vice President of Product, Development, TV and Content Clive Dickens, gaming network use is mammoth compared to everything else and people spent more time gaming than watching Netflix. Gaming is the fastest growing sector of media and entertainment according to PwC and is expected to be worth $4 billion this year.
With the new Playstation 5 and Xbox coming out during Christmas, demand is expected to increase even further into the new year.
Telstra and Optus are scrambling to ensure they are offering products that attract gamers to the their respective networks. Important for gamers are obviously aspects such as network bandwidth to ensure that they have a good ping during games.
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Showpo opens it’s first store in the US

Starting a business is not easy. Making the store profitable is even harder. Doing well enough to expand the store overseas is a huge achievement and this success is what has finally been achieved for Showpo.

Showpo is an Australian fashoin brand that has been able to open up there first store in the US. The founder, Jane Lu, is the brains behind the brand and is currently known as the founder of one of Australia’s most popular and fastest growing fashion retailers.

The company has been able to hit huge milestones continuously. Showpo hit turnovers of over $30 million in 2017 and somehow they have been able to double that to $65 million today. How has the business been able to do so well? according to Janue Lu, it’s mostly due to learning some hard lessons in business.

Jane Lu’s business ventures started she created pop up stores around Sydney that gave the opportunity for unknown or up and coming designers the platform to showcase their designs. This idea seemed decent but it did not work and as a result, she put herself into debt and was unemployed.

Persistance was the key for Jane, she continued with a new busienss idea and started Showpo.This business was able to grow strongly with good business techniques from Jane and a lot of hard work. It also helped to be starting in a time where the online shopping craze was just getting started.

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Ethical Fashion, the great goal

It is well known that third world countries are often outsourced for fashion due to the low cost of labor. Although the costs are low, it is a risk that the labor being used is either child labor or forced labor.

A report was put together by Baptist World Aid which analyses the fashion industry and it’s commitment to ethical fashion. As part of the report, Baptist World Aid names and shames businesses that they determine do not meet ethical standards of fashion sourcing.

Over 135 fashion companies have provided information for the report and they were ranked in a A to F format based on how their systems and processes were designed to ensure ethical sourcing of fashion.

There were some well known names that participated such as Cotton On, Kookai and Country Road who willingly participated in the process and based on analysis of their data, achieved am A grade.

Smaller fashion retailers such as Showpo and Rebecca Valance did not participate in the survey and were given an F grade. However, many of these retailers may not have the ability and financial position to achieve ethical fashion sourcing to the same degree as more cashed up bigger retailers. Many smaller retailers who did not participate have commented that although they did not contribute to the survey, sourcing ethical fashion is high on their priority list as a business.

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