Women shun insurance industry says PwC report
Millennial generation females are shunning the insurance industry on the belief that there is a lack of career progression. A new survey from PwC of 8,000 women globally reveals that insurance is the least popular profession within the demographic. The broader financial services sector fares little better. Among the findings 13 per cent of millennial women say they wouldn’t work in insurance “because of its image” compared to 10 per cent in banking and 5 per cent in asset management.
For diversity, insurance has a bad reputation among women with 80 per cent believing that the industry talks about diversity but does not provide truly equal opportunities and 64 per cent of women who do work in insurance say their firm isn’t doing enough to change that. Those outside the insurance industry but within financial services view insurance as doing less to promote diversity than the broader sector.
PwC’s John Howe commented: “This should serve as a wake-up call to those in the insurance sector to bring their diversity policies to life, re-evaluate how they develop their people and create a structure where women can thrive. Having visible female role models at all levels of an organisation will be an important step to show employees and potential employees that leadership positions are achievable for all.”
President’s “one sentence fix” for Obamacare dismissed by GOP
President Obama said Monday that if the Supreme Court rules that the current operation of the Affordable Care Act is unlawful then a simple “one sentence fix” would solve the issue. Speaking at the G7 summit the president said that a simple line in the Act noting that healthcare.gov subsidies are available in all 50 states is all that would be required.
However Bloomberg reports that the Republicans were quick to dismiss the idea. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso issued a statement saying that “Congress will not pass a so called ‘one-sentence’ fake fix.” The senator wants a contingency plan instead. Mr Obama said he expects the Supreme Court to “play it straight when it comes to the interpretation” of the Act.
Ransomware on the rise warns McAfee
Cybersecurity firm McAfee says that incidents of ransomware are on the rise. The threat involves malicious software that infects a device and locks the user out until they pay a ransom to release it. In the first quarter of 2015, McAfee Labs registered a 165 per cent increase in new ransomware. The first quarter also saw new Adobe Flash malware samples increase by 317 percent - researchers attribute the rise to several factors: the popularity of Adobe Flash as a technology; user delay in applying available Adobe Flash patches; new methods to exploit product vulnerabilities; a steep increase in the number of mobile devices that can play Adobe Flash files. McAfee Labs suggests organizations and individuals make it a priority to learn how to recognize phishing emails.
