Insight

Store cover soars
The rocketing cost of insurance for British businesses was starkly illustrated when Selfridges said the annual insurance premium for its Oxford Street store jumped from £400,000 to £1.9m. Oxford Street rival John Lewis declined to reveal the level of premiums paid for its nearby flagship store, but said the group's overall property costs had recently increased by "several million pounds".

Food safety compliance
After 18 months' development, two leading food hygiene and safety businesses have launched an interactive web-based risk management system for the food and drink industry. It is designed to enable managers to achieve better food safety compliance in a shorter time. ERisk Foodcheck will identify food safety compliance tasks and assign them to specific staff within a food or drink manufacturing plant. It will also create reports for the next level of management.

New EU solvency rules
The results of an 11-month study by KPMG, which is expected to form the basis of the European Commission's drive towards a new solvency regime - Solvency 2 - are expected to be published this month. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has labelled Solvency 2 as the biggest single regulatory issue facing the industry. KPMG has produced a comparative analysis of regulatory regimes across Europe including: risk management, risk modelling; how to value assets; technical provisions; alternative forms of risk financing such as alternative risk transfer (ART) and financial reinsurance and internal accountancy standards.

Landmark building audits
Security experts are scruntising high profile buildings in London and North-east England because of heightened fears of a terrorist attacks. Buildings such as Canary Wharf in London Docklands and the Stadium of Light in Sunderland are facing safety audits to assess their vulnerability of biological attacks form the air.

Local authority building control departments are concentrating on the effects of air attack on tall buildings in London.

In the North-east experts are focusing on the threat of biological attack.

Road safety
Road safety charity Brake's fleet safety forum has set up a working group in a bid to reduce the 100,000 accidents in the UK each year involving business vehicles

School for safety
ACE Europe has relaunched its risk management for schools website www.eduvia.com with the aim of improving risk management procedures for school trips. The site provides practical advice to help teachers and local educational authorities plan school trips.

Extend Pool Re
Clients have criticised the slow progress of talks aimed at extending an insurance scheme that covers losses in the event of a terrorist attack. The Association of Insurance and Risk Managers (Airmic) warned that without the type of insurance cover provided by Pool Re, some companies could be severely affected in their operations. It said many investments could be cancelled, with some companies ceasing operations. Meanwhile European insurance giants have created their own terrorism reinsurance pool.