GCC Insurance Daily
The day's insurance news across the GCC: regulation, governance, AI in insurance, and people moves. Curated, attributed, and linked to the source.
Top story
The board has approved a OMR9m rights issue that would take issued capital from OMR16m to as much as OMR25m, and will ask shareholders to raise the authorised ceiling from OMR20m to OMR30m. Both steps need FSA approval and an EGM; it would be the company's second rights issue in four years, after the OMR6m raise in 2022.
Both are Dubai-based internal promotions: Zaatar was SVP Treaty at Marsh and Sharif SVP for IMEA at Marsh Re. Two insiders sharing the regional role gives the broker continuity going into a 1 January renewal season shaped by the regional conflict.
The founder and CEO of SHIELDS Miller, one of the association's original board members, takes over from Philip Story. Rajab built SHIELDS before its sale to Miller this year and earlier held senior roles at Aon Benfield and Willis Re, so the DIFC's industry body now has a reinsurance broker in the chair.
The regulator gathered more than 200 physicians to build clinical buy-in for its national health insurance platform, which it says has processed over 20 million digital transactions since launch. The next step is linking every pharmacy, so prescriptions move electronically between hospitals, pharmacies and insurers.
Atlas Magazine puts Saudi market turnover at SAR84bn in 2025, up from SAR42bn in 2021, with motor (11 million insured vehicles) and health (14 million covered lives) doing most of the work. Compulsory cover and the 2023 creation of the Insurance Authority are the drivers cited; the next leg of growth has to come from lines that are not mandatory.
Writing in CIR Magazine, Beale & Company's Lyndon Richards says the conflict is feeding into pricing, sanctions compliance and reinsurance support across shipping, energy, aviation and infrastructure. His practical point: losses that mix physical damage, business interruption, supply-chain delay and force majeure are where disputes will land, so carriers should scenario-test exclusions, sanctions clauses and aggregation language now.
Each item is a short editorial summary with a link to the original source. Items marked Rumour · unverified are unconfirmed and should be treated with caution. Compiled automatically; corrections welcome.