This year, 2011, will enter the record books as one of the most expensive for the insurance industry. There has been an unprecedented range of natural disasters around the world and the cumulative effect has been a major disruption of the supply chains. It might not seem very important to us as we sit in relative comfort in the US but, as an example, the floods in Thailand have been catastrophic and they have been having a direct effect on what we can buy here and the prices at which we can buy. To explain we need to reflect on the reality of global trading. To earn savings in low-cost labor and manufacturing, work is farmed out to different countries around the world. In some cases, the whole product is fabricated and assembled abroad. In others, the parts come from multiple manufacturing sites to be assembled in one of our own factories. When the world is at peace, everything arrives “just in time” and we find everything we want when we want it. But this year has been Japan suffer a major earthquake and tsunami in March, there were extraordinary tornadoes in the US, Hurricane Irene hit in September and then came the floods in Thailand.

When you put all these together, the disruption to the supply chain has been immense. Globally, the claims on Business Interruption Insurance has been more than $70 billion so far this year. The problem for the insurance industry is simple. Suppose one factory in Thailand owned by Toyota suddenly finds itself several meters underwater. That may be only one factory out of action, but suppose it supplies parts to fifty other factories around the world. Now there are fifty-one claims for business interruption. As it happens, Thailand is the world’s second-largest producer of hard-disk drives, has factories owned by Honda and Toyota, and so on. The highest rainfall in fifty years flooded some 1,500 factories. Now scale up the disruption. It’s affecting every major manufacturing country around the world.

If your own business is in manufacturing, assembly, logistics or distribution, and you depend on moving complete products or parts around the country, you need to review all those parts of your insurance cover for events affecting your supply chain. This is both direct and contingent interruption, i.e. your exposure depends on where you are in the value added chain and how easily replacements can be found. Insurers are now going to ask for a lot more transparency. In the past, this type of insurance was underwritten with a minimum of information. After this year’s experience, insurers are more likely to ask for detailed disaster plans to show how your business will respond if key suppliers are unable to supply on time. A failure to produce such a plan is likely to lead to a refusal of cover or very high business insurance rates.

The changes in the weather patterns are becoming more obvious and all business insurances rates are going to rise, both to cover property damage and business interruptions. This is not the time to sit back as winter approaches and assume there will be no problems with winter storms whether here in the US or elsewhere in the world. Proper planning will keep your insurance affordable.

Let’s keep this real. For the majority, the idea of regular exercise is not a top priority. The closest most come to it is watching reality shows like The Biggest Loser in which celebrity trainers try to persuade unhealthily overweight families to change their lives for the better. Which, of course, brings us to the usual health pitch. All the medical evidence shows the link between those extra pounds and all those unfortunate health problems like diabetes, heart disease and some of the cancers. So, if you ask anyone wearing an expert’s hat, you will always hear the same advice to lose those extra pounds. The usual encouraging formula is any reduction of 10% or more in body weight adds years of healthy life. These experts pick 10% because the research shows any higher target is rejected as being beyond reach. In fact, many find the prospect of trying to lose 10% too much and give up before they start. Nevertheless, you will encounter real problems in getting health cover if you are obviously overweight. The insurer will load the premium rate to encourage you to get into the weight loss game.

So let’s switch to the other end of the activity scale and see what problems emerge. The ERs around the country fill up with sports injuries. This can be something relatively minor like a simple sprain or strain, or it can be broken bones, or more serious damage likely to cause long-term problems. The more people practice or train, the more they repeat the same muscular actions and this can cause serious strain injuries. The ones most at risk are those who train for endurance events like the marathon. Despite the fact the news media cover people dying while running in marathons, triathlons and other distance events, a remarkable number of people now enter these events. Some are doing it for “fun”. Others take a more professional approach. Some new research followed forty athletes training for endurance events, giving regular MRI scans. The results showed the majority were stretching their heart muscles, in five cases risking permanent damage. These five had been training for longer than the others with signs of scarring to the tissue within the right ventricle.

As with all research, it’s necessary to keep everything in context. There’s no evidence of training being dangerous for the average person. Indeed, within moderation, exercise is good for you. But if you take on a commitment based on training more than twenty hours a week, you are moving on to the other side of the scale where you are risking injury simply by continuing to train. For the record, the five athletes with heart damage were training ten hours a day which is excessive. The moral for you as an average person is not to start an activity at your maximum. Build up slowly, getting fitter and developing muscle tone before pushing yourself too hard. In this way, you will sail through any medical examination to get your group or individual health insurance. Thereafter, if you do decide to train hard for an endurance event, get regular medical checkups to ensure you do not damage yourself and to reduce the risk of your health insurance plan being cancelled.