New York Life Insurance Co. made a USD 6.3 billion acquisition deal of a Cigna Corp. unit that sells life and disability insurance, Bloomberg reports.

The total number of e-MTPL policies in 2019 (as of the mid-December) increased 7.6 times from 2018 level, to over 1 million e-policies (vs. 137.8 e-policies sold in 2018), Forinsurer reports.

On December 17, the Ministry of Agriculture announced the planned volume of agroinsurance subsidies in Russia for 2020, which could be increased to RUB 4.2 billion (~EUR 60 million) vs. the initially planned RUB 2.2. billion (~EUR 31.5 million), ASN reports.

French insurance group AXA announced that it has completed the acquisition of the remaining 50% stake in Chinese insurer AXA Tianping Property & Casualty Insurance Company Ltd from its domestic shareholders, becoming the largest 100% foreign-owned P&C insurer in local market.

Mirela Agache Durand is joining Groupama to be nominated by the Board as Chief Executive Officer at Groupama Asset Management.

According to the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan, the country is ready to introduce mandatory social health insurance, 97% of the population already being updated in the databases, allinsurance.kz reports.

The cabinet of ministers of Azerbaijan approved the Statute of the Agricultural Insurance Fund, Trend reports with reference to the cabinet.

From 2021, Uzbekistan will switch to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) - as follows from the draft resolution of the President of Uzbekistan "On additional measures for the transition to international financial reporting standards", published on the Uzbekistan's state portal (in Uzbek language).

The third round of pitches in Vienna Insurance Group's "VIG Xelerate" digitalisation initiative ended in November 2019. VIG is providing around EUR 5 million to promote award-winning projects submitted by its Group companies.

On December 13, 2019, during the meeting of the Supervisory Board of Generali TU SA, Roger HODGKISS was appointed as Member of the Company's Management Board.

On December 11, 2019, The Insurance Supervision Agency of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced the temporary withdrawal of AURA license to perform MTPL business in Tuzla Canton.

In September, the Czech National Bank (CNB) completed this year's round of supervisory stress tests of banks and insurance companies. The tests used data as of the end of 2018. "Their results demonstrated that the two sectors are still prepared to withstand a deterioration in economic conditions", as CNB affirmed in a statement.

The value of total assets under administration, at the level of the entire private pension system, reached RON 61.53 billion (EUR 12.95 billion), as of September 30, 2019, up 24.04% from December 2018. The share of private pensions in Gross Domestic Product was, at the end of September 2019, 6.22% compared to 5.22% in December 2018.

For the third year in a row, Vienna Insurance Group (VIG) has received the gold award for the insurance industry at the annual BEST RECRUITERS ranking.

On December 13, 2019, AM Best announced the revision of the outlooks to negative from stable and affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "a" of Barents Re and Barents Re Lux.

On December 13, 2019, Fitch Ratings made the announcement of upgrading Adriatic Slovenica d.d.'s (Adriatic) Insurer Financial Strength (IFS) Rating to 'A' from 'BBB+'.

On December 12, 2019, the Supervisory Board of Munich Re has appointed Dr. Achim KASSOW (53) to the Board of Management with effect from 1 May 2020.

EIOPA has recently launched the 2019 edition of its Annual European Insurance Overview. Based on annually reported Solvency II information for 2018, the report covers all countries in the EEA.

European insurers pay out almost EUR 3 billion a day in claims to help businesses and individuals through difficult events and in benefits to long-term savers, states the most recent publication by Insurance Europe.

At the beginning of December 2019, the Bank of Lithuania appointed Jekaterina GOVINA as Director of the Supervision Service.