Overseas travelers, especially to the US, have made major changes to their travel habits, some of which are reflected in the sales of travel insurance.
"We are not sure whether there are more travelers buying travel insurance in the past month, but one thing we are sure about is that those who have bought, purchsed higher amounts of protection than before. In the past people would buy about NT$5 million worth of coverage -- now they want NT$8 million in coverage or even higher," said Peter Van (范盛斌), an executive at Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽).
The increase in coverage was useful for the family of a passenger on the American Airline Airbus-300 that crashed in Queens, New York last Monday.
One of the two Taiwanese passengers, Chen Ching-chih (陳清智), bought NT$30 million worth of travel insurance coverage from Zurich Insurance Group (蘇黎世保險集團) before taking the flight. Following the crash, Zurich Insurance said Chen's family would be awarded NT$30 million immediately.
According to the company, Chen bought two travel insurance policies from them, including a NT$15 million policy from Zurich Insurance (Taiwan) and another NT$15 million Zurich Travel Safety Insurance policy from Zurich Life Insurance. The total insurance premium for these two policy was about NT$3,000.
According to Zurich Insurance, it costs under NT$1,500 to have a travel insurance policy with NT$15 million in coverage.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained