All Posts in "Day: April 5, 2022"

AM Best Assigns Performance Assessment to Castel Underwriting Agencies Limited, Castel Underwriting Europe B.V.

By Favour Nnabugwu

 

AM Best has assigned a Performance Assessment of PA-2 (Excellent) to Castel Underwriting Agencies Limited (Castel) (United Kingdom) and Castel Underwriting Europe B.V. (CUE) (Netherlands).

CUE is a wholly owned subsidiary of Castel. The outlook assigned to the Performance Assessment (assessment) is stable.

This assessment reflects Castel’s excellent underwriting capabilities, excellent governance and internal controls, excellent financial condition, excellent organisational talent and excellent depth and breadth of relationships.

In AM Best’s view, CUE’s operations exhibit a number of commonalities with Castel and CUE is regarded as strategically and financially important as the group’s European platform, providing access to business in the European Economic Area. CUE is integrated with Castel and has common underwriting practices, with generally consistent underwriting performance expected.

Castel, through its model of investing in early-stage managing general agents (MGA) and underwriting teams (collectively “underwriting cells”) on its club-style MGA platform, has access to expert and experienced underwriters with a proven track record in their niche. Underwriting capabilities further benefit from Castel’s in-house underwriting staff. Since launching in 2014, Castel has demonstrated its ability to grow its underwriting cells whilst providing profitable business to its capacity providers. The limited track record of a number of Castel’s programmes is considered a partially offsetting factor to the underwriting capabilities component.

Castel’s governance and internal controls benefit from its scale, relative to many other delegated underwriting authority enterprises (DUAEs) in the market. The company has an appropriate committee structure, including a board of directors featuring independent and non-executive directors, supported by a number of other committees. The company performs internal reviews regularly, covering underwriting and compliance. There is limited integration of systems with (re)insurance partners.

Castel’s financial condition is supported by its consistently profitable operations since inception. Stability of income benefits from the broad range of programmes underwritten by the company, reducing dependence on any single programme. AM Best considers the acquisitive nature of Castel’s business model to pose some risks to the company’s financial condition. The company is aware of and actively manages these risks.

Castel’s senior management team is experienced and has a proven track record in the industry. The company’s board of directors brings further experience and oversight. The organisational structure is well-defined with a clear path of reporting duties.

Castel offers a range of programmes in its core markets in the United Kingdom and Europe, as well as internationally. The company has relationships with a high number of well-rated capacity providers. A significant portion of Castel’s processed premium is placed with capacity providers that have supported Castel for at least three years.

Patoma Admin by — April 5, 2022 in Insurance 0
FAAN pensioners barricade agency’s gate over CPA implementation

By Favour Nnabugwu

 

The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) pensioners on Tuesday barricaded the entrance to the agency’s regional headquarters in Ikeja over what they described as management’s inability to implement of Consequential salary /Pension Adjustment (CPA)

Displaying various placards, the pensioners have vowed to remain at the gate FAAN hindering movement

The FAAN management had promised to start the payment of the CPA in March but has not met its obligations

The secretary of NUP FAAN branch, Comrade Emeka Njoku while addressing the pensioners accused the FAAN management of being insensitive to their plights as senior citizens

He said the current management of FAAN compounded their issues by paying workers first before pensioners, saying that pensioners were paid first before workers by the past management

An implementation committee was set up comprising two members of NUP, two representatives of the director of finance FAAN, a representative of the audit department and three from the human resources and administration directorate to draw up a template for the Consequential salary /pension adjustment as concrete evidence, provide evidence of progress implementation from various directorates within two weeks in March 2022

Based on this development, the NUP which had earlier threatened protest across the country’s airport decided to suspend it.

Njoku then told journalists that series of meetings were held between them and the management of FAAN without positive results

In September 2021, FAAN management agreed to commence payment in January 2022 but failed to meet up. With this, the NUP gave ultimatum to FAAN to pay on or before 1st March 2022 and a meeting was brokered while the protest was shelved.

It was then agreed that by the end of March that the issues will be resolved but FAAN did not meet up with the agreement

In his solidarity speech, the general secretary of Association of Aviation Professionals (ANAP) Comrade Abdulrasaq Saidu said there were so many deceit in the system accusing the human resource department of FAAN for not telling workers the real situation of condition of Service

Saidu, noted that the absence of board of directors for aviation parastatals has been the greatest problem of the agencies

Patoma Admin by — April 5, 2022 in Pension 0
Russia resumes flights to 52 ‘friendly’ nations

By admin

 

Russian news agency TASS reported that restrictions on flights from Russia to 52 countries would be canceled from April 9. These restrictions were put in place to slow the spread of COVID and are being lifted on the advice of the operational headquarters for combatting coronavirus.

Russia Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced the move, which he says applies to “friendly states”,

“Starting from April 9 we are lifting restrictions set for combatting coronavirus pandemic, which applied to our regular and charter flights between Russia and a number of other countries. Now we are resuming flights with 52 countries, including Argentina, India, South Africa and other friendly states.”

Mishustin added that earlier, it was possible to fly to 15 countries without restrictions, including some states of the EAEU (the Eurasian Economic Union), Qatar, Mexico, and others.

The EAEU is an economic union of Russia and its ‘near neighbors’, formed after the demise of the Soviet Union to foster trade and development. It’s often seen as a foil to the European Union’s influence, and key member states are Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

The TASS statement lists all 52 states where flights can be resumed, which can be loosely grouped as being in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and South and Central America.

Some of the countries that can fly to and from Russia from April 9 include Brazil, China, Turkey, Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa, North Korea, Seychelles and Saudi Arabia.

While part of Russia’s retaliation to economic sanctions was to close its airspace to airlines from 36 countries, international flights are already arriving and departing from Russia on a daily basis.
A quick scan of today’s flight boards at Moscow’s two airports, Sheremetyevo (SVO) and Domodedovo (DME), show carriers including Emirates Airlines, Air Arabia, Etihad Airways, SriLankan Airlines, Qatar Airways, Air China, and Air Serbia operating international flights.

Flightradar24.com data shows a popular track of flights from Dubai crossing Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and through Russia to Moscow, such as Emirates Airlines EK133 and Aeroflot SU527. This is a simple corridor from Russia to the Middle East, where connections can be made to all of those ‘friendly countries’ the Russian prime minister talks so fondly of.

While Russia is now the world’s most sanctioned country, ahead of Iran, Syria, and North Korea, it is not facing sanctions from countries in Central and South America, Africa, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Asia, apart from Japan.

With all of those regions open to them, Russian airlines have a large and safe playing field in which to operate. Presumably, the lack of sanctions means refueling the aircraft or fixing any MRO niggles will not be an issue.

Going in the other direction, large markets like China, India, Africa, and South America will be able to connect with Russia for trade, tourism, and general travel.

Perhaps even the oligarchs will get their Gulfstreams and Globals out again and head out for some summer sun, well beyond the reach of the authorities who would confiscate their aircraft and leave them stranded.

Patoma Admin by — April 5, 2022 in Aviation 0