“Say yes to more things” In her book, The Best Advice I Ever Got, Katie Couric quotes Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt as advising: “Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country, say yes to meet new friends, say yes to learn something new. Yes is how […]

  “Don’t work too hard” In a LinkedIn post last year, The Huffington Post cofounder Arianna Huffington revealed that she’s often asked if young people pursuing their dreams should burn the candle at both ends. “This couldn’t be less true,” she writes. “And for far too long, we have been operating under a collective delusion […]

“Don’t listen to your parents” Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, said in an interview with The New York Times that recent grads shouldn’t listen to their parents. He said: “They’re the most important relationships in your life, but you should never take your parents’ career advice and I’m using parents as a proxy for all […]

“Never look back in regret – move on to the next thing” “The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures, rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me,” the Virgin Group founder and chairman told The Good Entrepreneur. “I have fun running all the Virgin businesses — so a setback is […]

Insurers that complete an M&A deal are flying ahead of their peers. A year after agreeing a deal, the share prices of insurance companies have been outperforming their competitors’, according to research by Willis Towers Watson, the Cass Business School and Mergermarket. The group looked at all M&A deals with a value of over $50m […]

It’s easy to go to work on autopilot. While immediate objectives might change, your job architecture – working hours, reporting lines, team structure, budgets – remains effectively the same. Which means your way of doing things stays largely the same too. In many ways this is necessary. Constantly changing your methods would be hugely inefficient. […]

Donald Trump may be just what the global insurance industry needs. Shares in several of the sector’s largest companies have outperformed the market strongly since the US election, on hopes that a prolonged squeeze on their returns is finally drawing to a close. Years of ultra-low rates have eaten away at fixed income returns, hurting insurers as […]

Householders are cancelling healthcare insurance policies in the face of rising insurance taxes, the boss of AXA UK, Amanda Blanc, warned this weekend. This is the sharp end of the controversial rise in insurance premium taxes over recent years. And for Blanc, who is head of the group that has ten million UK customers, it […]

Legal & General has agreed to sell its Dutch arm Legal & General Nederlands to pensions and life insurer Chesnara for  €160m (£135.7m). Legal & General Netherlands is headquartered in Hilversum, Netherlands. It was established in 1984.  It provides risk and investment-linked products, sold through independent financial advisers. Mark Gregory, group chief financial officer at Legal […]

London-based RSA has announced changes to its commercial lines operation with the creation of two new divisions, as well as the appointment of a chief underwriting officer for the UK & International region. Effective immediately, RSA’s UK commercial lines business will be split into two distinct units, related to customers’ needs, the size and complexity […]