China’s Gift: Carona Virus Pandemic Threatens Insurers in two ways and one is way More Costly
Travel Insurance Providers may face claims for cancellations for travel plans yet taken. But the HUGE risk is covering costs for people ALREADY overseas. That’s way more costly
For people with travel insurance taken out prior to the #CaronaVirus being made a declared event, getting your money back will be relatively straight forward. In fact for most part, now that countries are closing their borders, the risks are going back onto the providers,because they cannot claim a lost booking if NO ONE is allowed to travel in. Refunds on flights will be easy to manage, and there will be a few claims for those bookings with a no refund element from the airline, but they tend to be at the lower cost market.
For Insurers the huge costs (potential losses) are having people STUCK overseas.
And for many Australians, traveling to Europe or North America during our summer, to work the ski fields, see the northern lights and so on is a hige draw card.
Travel Insurers need to start thinking about getting people home soon, or face months and months of paying for private hotels rooms, food etc for travelers stuck overseas. Instead of say a change over cost of change of plans costing a few hundreds or maybe even a couple of thousands, Travel Insurers like RACV, Travel Insurers Direct, and Covermore face accommodation and sustenance charges that could get into fifteen, twenty or thirty thousand dollars PER CLIENT if their customers are stuck in no fly or no travel zones. And let’s not talk about the costs if one of themis stuck in the rorting US medical system
China’s Gift has a fat tail. Right now, like an unhappy cat, that tail is swiping all the good trinkets off the bench!
The MP3 file below captures part two of our chat looking at the Future of Sex. Picking up on the theme of new technology that popped up towards the end of our first discussion in week one, here we move onto haptics and holographics and the extension of that technology from beyond the bedroom and…
Read More >Who’s Been Sleeping In My House? is a new Australian series presented by archaeologist Adam Ford that looks at the stories behind some of our old homes. Adam is the man behind the recent ‘Ned Kelly’ dig among other great archaeology finds here in Australia and the UK. As a futurist I’m always interested in…
Read More >The Association of Professional Futures is holding its first Virtual Gathering, following the sun from Europe, across North America and finishing in the Australia pacific zone. It kicks off tomorrow and links to the program and registration (it’s only $45 for guests for a program featuring some of the worlds most prominent futurists) You…
Read More >I join Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Darwin radio where we continue our discussion about the future of sex. We consider three main areas in this session – smart phone applications; remote relationships and the combination of haptics and holographics as one the emerging means by which we’ll maintain physical contact. You can download the…
Read More >In this chat with Vicki Kerrigan on radio ABC Darwin we discuss the future of sex. This is the first of potentially three conversations where we look at the increasing reach of technology way beyond current online match making sites, the social pressures driving the use of technology as well as the use of technology…
Read More >There’s been a bit of discussion in recent months about a softening housing market around Australia but I wonder how much of it is more indicative of unrealistic expectations on behalf of sellers? In futures work we think in terms of Assumptions and Expectations and aim to test our understanding and so I offer this…
Read More >Unfortunately it looks like my main email address has been hijacked and has been used to send out a series of spam emails. I’d like to apologise to anyone who has received some junk email purporting to come from ‘desiredfutures’ with a series of html links asking you to go and have a look. You…
Read More >Given the amount of plastic swimming in our oceans and rivers and the volume littering our land, the NT Government is aiming to introduce compulsory returns legislation on soft-drink bottles (as happens in South Australia), something that has apparently raised the ire of bottler, Coca Cola. Although they’ve recently backed away from their initial statement…
Read More >Deciphering the hype from reality with regard to drug use can be a challenge for most of us. Professor David Nutt in the UK has given me permission to post a link to the paper he has co-authored with Ruth Weissenborn that looks at the reality of a comparison of harm caused by two common…
Read More >Vicki Kerrigan and I finished off our discussion about the Future of Clothing on ABC Darwin yesterday. We discussed invisibility style cloaks, singlets that monitor your heart rate and stress levels, runners that capture electricity to power your wearable electronics and a few philosophical questions regarding our ability to deal with stress. The file…
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