Tag: China

Underwriting in China – A Digital Transformation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.genre.com/knowledge/publications/ri21-2-en.html

Excerpt:

The Life insurance market in China has grown tremendously with premiums increasing nearly three-fold from RMB1.06 trillion in 2010 to RMB2.96 trillion in 2019. With a population now close to 1.4 billion, the insurance penetration – which has grown to 4.6% – is still far from that of developed countries. Together this represents a business development opportunity because we expect the trend of growth in the insurance market to continue.

In anticipation, insurers in China began to move their underwriting from a paper process to an online one approximately three years ago. Today the bulk of transactions are paperless, except for a small volume of bank channel applications. However, given the huge daily volume of new business, insurers still have an urgent need to improve their processes further. While we are not suggesting a major overhaul of underwriting is needed, there is room to incorporate innovative ideas that address various pain points, provide a smoother customer experience while still balancing risk management needs.

Author(s): Orchis Li, Life/Health General Manager, Hong Kong; Dr. Celia Zhang Ying, Life/Health Regional Chief Underwriter & Senior Medical Officer, Shanghai

Publication Date: February 2021

Publication Site: Gen Re

When Adobe Stopped Flash Content From Running It Also Stopped A Chinese Railroad

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://jalopnik.com/when-adobe-stopped-flash-content-from-running-it-also-s-1846109630

Excerpt:

Adobe’s Flash, the web browser plug-in that powered so very many crappy games, confusing interfaces, and animated icons of the early web like Homestar Runneris now finally gone, after a long, slow, protracted death. For most of us, this just means that some goofy webgame you searched for out of misplaced nostalgia will no longer run. For a select few in China, though, the death of Flash meant being late to work, because the city of Dalian in northern China was running their railroad system on it.Yes, a railroad, run on Flash, the same thing used to run “free online casinos” and knockoff Breakout games in mortgage re-fi ads.

….

The railroad’s technicians did get everything back up and running, but the way they did this is fascinating, too. They didn’t switch the rail management system to some other, more modern codebase or software installation; instead, they installed a pirated version of Flash that was still operational. The knockoff version seems to be known as “Ghost Version.”

Author(s): Jason Torchinsky

Publication Date: 22 January 2021

Publication Site: Jalopnik

Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w

Abstract:

Stringent COVID-19 control measures were imposed in Wuhan between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Estimates of the prevalence of infection following the release of restrictions could inform post-lockdown pandemic management. Here, we describe a city-wide SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening programme between May 14 and June 1, 2020 in Wuhan. All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases. 107 of 34,424 previously recovered COVID-19 patients tested positive again (re-positive rate 0.31%, 95% CI 0.423–0.574%). The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan was therefore very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.

Authors: Shiyi Cao, Yong Gan, Chao Wang, Max Bachmann, Shanbo Wei, Jie Gong, Yuchai Huang, Tiantian Wang, Liqing Li, Kai Lu, Heng Jiang, Yanhong Gong, Hongbin Xu, Xin Shen, Qingfeng Tian, Chuanzhu Lv, Fujian Song, Xiaoxv Yin & Zuxun Lu

Publication Date: 20 November 2020

Publication Site: Nature Communications