Analysis: Battered India insurers need more than foreign funds | Reuters.
Pru to Pay $615 million for Hartford Life Unit
Life Index MIB August 2012 -1.9%
‘Mindfulness’ Is Being Incorporated Into Employer Strategies to Combat Multitasking
“Studies show that about 49 percent of our waking time, our minds have wandered away from the task at hand,” Bahl says. “Especially with digital communication, there’s a lot of texting, there’s a lot of multitasking going on, and people are losing the ability to focus when they really want to focus.”
This isn’t just harmless woolgathering. According to data from Basex, a Yorktown Heights, New York-based business research firm, the estimated annual cost to the U.S. economy in loss of productivity from multitasking is $997 billion and a minimum of 28 billion hours.
Working From Home? You’re a Better Worker – Wired.com
Why Niche Creation is Where It’s At – The Hart Technique
When you embody a niche in the market, you have fewer competitors. Therefore you also have more opportunities. Opportunities have a way of snowballing. Work begets work. The more you work, the more you work.
via Why Niche Creation is Where It’s At | The Hart Technique.
Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged – Scott Edinger – HBR
The Surprising Secret to Selling Yourself – Heidi Grant Halvorson – HBR
A set of ingenious studies conducted by Stanford’s Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia, and Harvard Business School’s Michael Norton paint a very clear picture of our unconscious preference for potential over actual success.
via The Surprising Secret to Selling Yourself – Heidi Grant Halvorson – Harvard Business Review.
What The Apollo Astronauts Did For Life Insurance : Planet Money : NPR
How a Lawyer Exploited the Fine Print and Found Himself Facing Federal Charges – ProPublica
ProPublica has taken a close look at the Caramadre case because it offers a window into a larger issue: The transformation of the life insurance industry away from its traditional business of insuring lives to peddling complex financial products. This shift has not been a smooth one. Particularly during the lead up to the financial crisis, companies wrote billions worth of contracts that now imperil their financial health.
In a series of detailed interviews, Caramadre said the companies designed the rules; all he did was exploit them. Their hunger for profits in a period of dizzying growth and competition, he contends, left them vulnerable to someone with his unusual acumen. The companies have argued in court that Caramadre is a fraud artist who should return every last dime he made. In his rulings to date, the federal judge hearing the civil cases has agreed with Caramadre’s contention that he was doing what the fine print allowed.
by Jake Bernstein
ProPublica, Aug. 24, 2012
Well written and well researched, this article is worth reading. An article from the Wall Street Journal in 2010 also makes for good reading and that link is below.
Investors Recruit Terminally Ill to Outwit Insurers on Annuities – WSJ.com.
lifeunderwriter.net 
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