Thousands of businesses across the nation breathed a sigh of relief on May 21, 2018, as the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that employment contracts containing class-action waivers are enforceable under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).

Blockchain and smart contracts have enabled the development of new approaches in the insurance industry, as they begin to replace outdated business models (with excessive paperwork, communication problems, multiple data operating systems and duplication of processes and the inability of syndicates to mine their data).

Global public opinion and data company YouGov has unveiled its index rankings for America’s top insurance companies for 2018 — with State Farm dominating the list.

The 2018 hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico began June 1, and as many Americans are still repairing the damage from last year’s devastating storms, hurricane preparedness and catastrophic events are squarely in focus.

The trick to getting blockchain to work in the insurance space is getting all the players in the market to align and agree on common standards and a way to govern the blockchain, Aon Benfield’s chief information officer said Friday.

The city of San Francisco has taken a definitive stance towards climate change by passing a resolution urging insurance companies to stop insuring and investing in fossil fuels. It’s the first municipal body in the US pressuring insurers to break ties with dirty energy.

Pay-per-mile auto insurance start-up Metromile announced earlier this week that it had secured $90 million in a round of funding led by insurance industry titans Tokio Marine Holdings and Intact Financial.

After buying home insurance from Liberty Mutual more than 35 years ago, Bob St. Clair received a letter stating that because his house in the Whispering Pines neighborhood of Scotts Valley was facing increased risk of wildfire and difficulty of access by emergency vehicles, Liberty Mutual was “choosing not to renew” his home insurance policy.

Aon has launched the latest edition of its “2018 Global Insurance Market Opportunities” studies, discussing blockchain and how the insurance industry can fully utilize it.

The National Safety Council reported a 14% increase in fatal auto accidents between 2014 and 2016, reaching the highest total since 2007. More accidents lead to more insurance claims, and thereby more payouts from insurers.

For most technologists, blockchain is the future. While this new technology can be confusing to the layman, it has the potential to disrupt much of what we know about the digital world.

The best plotlines in fiction are often based on reality, giving them a scary edge and chilling ring of truth. One such plotline was the subject of Showtime’s “Homeland” series: the fictional Vice President of the United States dies of a heart attack triggered by cyberattackers who hacked into his pacemaker.

Drones are no longer just cameras in the sky. They’re autonomous, artificially intelligent flying machines with the ability to capture sharp resolution of an asset and use machine learning to process data through analytical models. But all of that potential is constantly challenged by regulation.

Across industries, digital transformation and cloud migration are forces to be reckoned with. Insurance is no exception. As an industry accustomed to operating on legacy technology, insurers should approach the cloud migration process judiciously.

Artificial intelligence is coming for the service economy, according to Allstate Corp. Chief Executive Officer Tom Wilson. “It’s going to rip through this economy like a tsunami,” Wilson said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg TV from Aspen, Colorado.