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UAE insurance sector continued to grow in Q4-23: CBUAE

The UAE insurance sector continued to grow in Q4-2023, as reflected by increase in the gross written premiums. As of year-end, the number of licensed insurance companies in the UAE remained at 60, according to the Central Bank of the UAE's (CBUAE) Quarterly Economic Review (Q4-2023).

The insurance sector comprised 23 traditional national companies, 10 Takaful national and 27 foreign companies, while the number of insurance related professions remained at 491.

The review on insurance sector structure and activity showed that the gross written premium increased by 12.7% Y-o-Y in Q4 2023 to AED 53.2 billion, mostly due to an increase in health insurance premiums by 16.5% Y-o-Y and an increase in property and liability insurance premiums by 18.9% Y-o-Y, while the insurance of persons and fund accumulation premiums decreased by 12.4% Y-o-Y, resulting primarily from decrease in individual life premiums.

Gross paid claims of all types of insurance plans increased by 12.8% Y-o-Y to AED 31.1 billion at the end of 2023. This was mainly driven by the increase in claims paid in health insurance by 16.9% Y-o-Y and increase in paid claims in property and liability insurance by 10.9% Y-o-Y, partially offset by the decline in claims paid in insurance of persons and fund accumulation by 2.8% Y-o-Y.

The total technical provisions of all types of insurance increased by 8.4% Y-o-Y to AED 74.4 billion in Q4 2023 compared to AED68.6 billion in Q4 2022.

The volume of invested assets in the insurance sector amounted to AED 76 billion (60.4% of total assets) in Q4 2023 compared to AED 71.4 billion (59.4% of total assets) in Q4 2022.

The retention ratio of written insurance premiums for all types of insurance was 52.9 % (AED 28.1 billion) in Q4 2023, compared to 54.9% (AED 25.9 billion) at the end of 2022.

The UAE insurance sector remained well capitalized in terms of early warning ratios and risk assessment. Own funds to minimum capital requirement ratio increased to 335.7% in Q4 2023, compared to 309.3% at the end of 2022, due to an increase in own funds eligible to meet the minimum capital requirements.

Also, own funds to solvency capital requirement ratio rose to 221% in Q4 2023 compared to 208.5% in Q4 2022, due to an increase in own funds eligible to meet solvency capital requirements.

Finally, own funds to minimum guarantee fund ratio reached to 316.3% at the end of 2023 down from 314.6% a year earlier, due to higher eligible funds to meet minimum guarantee funds.

In terms of profitability, the net total profit to net written premiums increased to 6.5% in Q4 2023, compared to 2.9% at the end of 2022. The return on average assets increased to 0.3% in Q4 2023 compared to the 0.1% at the of the previous year.

South Korean government decides not to punish interns who resign
South Korea's Minister of Health and Welfare Cho Kyu-hong said at a press conference on the 8th local time that after comprehensively considering the suggestions of frontline interns and the situation on the front line of medical care, the government decided that from that day on, all interns and residents who resigned would not be given administrative sanctions such as revoking their medical licenses. Cho Kyu-hong also said that for interns and residents who have returned to work and those who have resigned and are preparing to re-register for internship courses in September, the government will make special cases to try to minimize the internship gap and not affect the relevant doctors from obtaining specialist medical licenses. Cho Kyu-hong said that the government believes that in order to minimize the diagnosis and treatment gaps for critically ill and emergency patients and ensure the smooth training process of interns and residents, it is in the public interest, so it has made a decision not to punish interns and residents who resigned. It is hoped that major hospitals will complete the resignation processing of doctors who have not returned to work before July 15 and determine the scale of vacancies. Previously, large general hospitals in South Korea, such as Seoul National University Hospital, Yonsei University Severance Hospital, and Seoul Asan Medical Center, suspended or limited their medical services in an effort to cancel all penalties against interns and residents.
The largest password leak in history exposes nearly 10 billion credentials
The largest collection of stolen passwords ever has been leaked to a notorious crime marketplace, according to cybersecurity researchers at Cybernews. This leak, dubbed RockYou2024 by its original poster “ObamaCare,” holds a file containing nearly 10 billion unique plaintext passwords. Allegedly gathered from a series of data breaches and hacks accumulated over several years, the passwords were posted on July 4th and hailed as the most extensive collection of stolen and leaked credentials ever seen on the forum. “In its essence, the RockYou2024 leak is a compilation of real-world passwords used by individuals all over the world,” the researchers told Cybernews. “Revealing that many passwords for threat actors substantially heightens the risk of credential stuffing attacks.” Credential stuffing attacks are among the most common methods criminals, ransomware affiliates, and state-sponsored hackers use to access services and systems. Threat actors could exploit the RockYou2024 password collection to conduct brute-force attacks against any unprotected system and “gain unauthorized access to various online accounts used by individuals whose passwords are included in the dataset,” the research team said. This could affect online services, cameras and hardware This could affect various targets, from online services to internet-facing cameras and industrial hardware. “Moreover, combined with other leaked databases on hacker forums and marketplaces, which, for example, contain user email addresses and other credentials, RockYou2024 can contribute to a cascade of data breaches, financial frauds, and identity thefts,” the team concluded. However, despite the seriousness of the data leak, it is important to note that RockYou2024 is primarily a compilation of previous password leaks, estimated to contain entries from a total of 4,000 massive databases of stolen credentials, covering at least two decades. This new file notably includes an earlier credentials database known as RockYou2021, which featured 8.4 billion passwords. RockYou2024 added approximately 1.5 billion passwords to the collection, spanning from 2021 through 2024, which, though a massive figure, is only a fraction of the reported 9,948,575,739 passwords in the leak. Thus, users who have changed their passwords since 2021 may not have to panic about a potential breach of their information. That said, the research team at Cybernews stressed the importance of maintaining data security. In response to the leak, they recommend immediately changing the passwords for any accounts associated with the leaked credentials, ensuring each password is strong and unique and not reused across different platforms. Additionally, they advised enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA), which requires an extra form of verification beyond the password, wherever possible, to strengthen cyber security. Lastly, tech users should utilize password manager software, which securely generates and stores complex passwords, mitigating the risk of password reuse across multiple accounts.
Are US development jobs falling off a cliff?
Companies are going to have fewer people and fewer layers. Ten years from now, the software development circuit may have fewer jobs, higher salaries, and more product-centric work. The reason behind it is the rapid development of AI, AI has approached human beings at the intelligence level, a lot of work relying on thinking ability may be handed over to AI, while emotion is still the territory of human beings, how to communicate and collaborate is the most important ability in the near future. When Indeed's chart for software development and operations jobs was released, we found that, as the chart shows, there was a peak in early 2022, but after that there was a precipitous decline.
Nvidia H20 will sell 1 million units this year, contributing $12 billion in revenue!
Recently, according to the FT, citing the latest forecast data of the market research institute SemiAnalysis, AI chip giant NVIDIA will ship more than 1 million new NVIDIA H20 acceleration chips to the Chinese market this year, and it is expected that the cost of each chip is between $12,000 and $13,000. This is expected to generate more than $12 billion in revenue for Nvidia. Affected by the United States export control policy, Nvidia's advanced AI chip exports to China have been restricted, H20 is Nvidia based on H100 specifically for the Chinese market to launch the three "castration version" GPU among the strongest performance, but its AI performance is only less than 15% of H100, some performance is even less than the domestic Ascend 910B. When Nvidia launched the new H20 in the spring of this year, there were reports that due to the large castration of H20 performance, coupled with the high price, Chinese customers' interest in buying is insufficient, and they will turn more to choose China's domestic AI chips. Then there are rumors that Nvidia has lowered the price of the H20 in order to improve its competitiveness. However, the latest news shows that due to supply issues caused by the low yield of the Ascend 910B chip, Chinese manufacturers in the absence of supply and other better options, Nvidia H20 has started to attract new purchases from Chinese tech giants such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Bytedance. Analysts at both Morgan Stanley and SemiAnalysis said the H20 chip is now being shipped in bulk and is popular with Chinese customers, despite its performance degradation compared to chips Nvidia sells in the United States.
Portadown businessman avoids jail for sexual assault of teen under his employment Defence said the defendant 'continues to deny' the charges and bail in the sum of £1,000 was fixed for appeal
A Portadown man has avoided jail after sexually assaulting a 16-year-old shop worker under his employment. -ADVERTISEMENT- Brian Thomas Chapman (58), of Moyallan Road, appeared before Newry Magistrates’ Court on Monday for sentencing on two counts of sexual assault. The prosecution outlined that on September 23, 2020, a 16-year-old student in the employment of Brian Chapman, disclosed to her mother about incidents that had occurred in her workplace. She said Chapman had put his hand on her thigh and the back of her leg. She also disclosed that she had been getting extra money from him and he had been sending her text messages. The allegations were reported to police the next day, September 24. The victim then took part in an interview on October 9, in which she said, when she was alone in Chapman’s office, he placed his hand on her upper thigh and his other hand on her lower back, underneath her trousers. The defendant was arrested and interviewed at Lurgan police station, where he denied the allegations. His phone was seized and an examination was carried out. The first interview of the defendant took place on October 9, during which he admitted to sending a message about wanting the victim to work 24/7, but stated this was a joke. The second interview took place on January 28, 2021, where he admitted to sending the 24/7 message, but denied sending other messages, such as “hope you’re spending the pounds on something special”. Throughout this process, Chapman denied sending the messages and denied any of the sexual assaults alleged by the victim. On the Chapman’s criminal record, the prosecution added that he was convicted of three common assaults on appeal. In terms of commission, these matters pre-dated this case but the conviction occurred during the running of this case and also involved a female working for the defendant. Prosecution continued that the age of the victim was an aggravating feature, arguing there was a “vulnerability” due to the “power-imbalance” between Chapman and the young student working for him. An additional aggravating feature, they said, was that during the course of the defence, part of the defence was that the victim had “manipulated or manufactured” some of the text messages that were sent. A defence lawyer, speaking on the pre-sentence report, noted the author deemed Chapman to be of low risk. He also noted that similar offences were contested in the County Court in respect of another complaint, with the judge substituting indecent assault charges for common assault. He also argued a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) was not necessary as the offending was four years ago, there has been no repetition and risk had been addressed. District Judge Eamonn King noted the defendant was convicted on two of four original charges following a contest, which ran over a number of days, with the case adjourned for a pre-sentence report and victim impact statement to be produced. He added the defendant “continues to deny” the charges and seeks to appeal the outcome. District Judge King, on reading the pre-sentence report, noted the defendant “denies ever hugging or touching the individual and he denies any sexual attraction to the victim”, but pointed to a paragraph in the report which stated, “From the available evidence, it’s possible to surmise that he demonstrated risk taking and impulsive behaviour. It appears that he took advantage of his position and power in a bid to meet his sexual needs, given the victim’s young age and the fact that he was her employer”. The report added that this demonstrated “limited victim empathy and responsibility due to his denial of the offences”. On the victim impact statement, District Judge King described her as a young girl getting her first job, with the “world as her oyster”. He continued: “As a result of what she says occurred, that turned on its head. It left her feeling inwardly uncomfortable, anxious and lonely. She cut herself off from her friends. She stopped going out. She didn’t want to go to school.” He also described a “degree of manipulation” in the case, as this was the victim’s first job and there was a power imbalance between her as an employee, and Chapman as the employer. In his sentencing remarks, District Judge King, said: “I’ve taken time to emphasise to the victim in this case that the victim did nothing wrong. The victim did everything right and the victim shouldn’t feel lonely, anxious or isolated. “The victim should feel confident, strong and outgoing.” Owing to the defendant’s ongoing denial of the charges, he added: “My sentencing exercise isn’t the conclusion of the case today, but I will sentence, so that we can move towards the conclusion going forward. “I am satisfied, irrespective of what the pre-sentence report says, that the defendant took advantage of someone, attempted to groom someone and was guilty of the two offences.” On the two counts, Chapman was sentenced to three months in prison, suspended for two years. He was also made subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) for five years and placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years. Following sentencing, District Judge King fixed bail for appeal at £1,000.