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Louisiana Manufacturer to Pay $105K Over Age Discrimination Suit 0

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Louisiana Manufacturer to Pay $105K Over Age Discrimination Suit

Article 0 Comments J&M Industries, Inc., a manufacturing and distribution company based in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, has agreed to pay a former employee $105,000 to settle an age discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced. According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, J&M Industries violated federal law when it fired an employee because of her age after she refused to retire when she turned 65 years old. A company manager asked the employee repeatedly about retirement as she approached her 65th birthday. After telling the company she had no plans to retire, the company informed the employee her position of purchasing agent was being eliminated due to economic uncertainty. Less than a month after firing the employee, the company hired a man in his thirties as a new purchasing agent, the same position the company claimed to have eliminated. Such alleged conduct violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which prohibits discrimination against individuals 40 or older because of age. The EEOC filed its suit (EEOC v. J&M Industries, Inc., Civil Action No. 2:23-cv-01100) in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Under the three-year consent decree settling the suit, J&M Industries...

U.S. Hospitals’ Weekly COVID-19 Death Count Rises Again 0

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U.S. Hospitals’ Weekly COVID-19 Death Count Rises Again

Start Slideshow U.S. COVID-19 surge figures still look terrible. Hospital-reported COVID deaths of people of all ages increased to 935, or 30% more than the total reported the previous week, according to data reported by hospitals to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Excluding weeks when spurts of data from Iowa threw off the counts, it’s the worst figure since  early February 2023. What it means: The latest numbers are not nearly as bad as the numbers reported during the worst weeks of the COVID pandemic, but they mean “endemic COVID” is still a big problem. Working-age hospitalizations: The number of COVID hospitalizations of people ages 20 through 59 was 5,045, according to the HHS data. That was down 10% from the previous week, but it means the count has been over 5,000 for seven straight weeks, since the week ending Dec. 16, 2023. Previously, the count had been below 5,000, and usually below 3,500, every week from early March 2023. About 22% of the adults hospitalized for COVID in the latest week were ages 20 through 59. Rough 4% of all people admitted to U.S. hospitals with COVID are dying. For a look at the five states with the highest...

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How Investors Can Ride ‘A Bull Market of Negativity’

What You Need to Know Election years are volatile, but results don’t lag other years’ returns by much. U.S. stocks lean on “stronger balance sheets, sturdy economic fundamentals” and innovative capacity. Money market rates will likely trend lower, opening opportunities for high-dividend-paying equities. Even as the stock market has soared into 2024, investors face ongoing uncertainty — a contentious U.S. presidential election, a possible recession, a warming planet and the financial effects of wars in the Middle East and Europe. Given the unknowns, clients may wonder how to position their portfolios to weather whatever electoral, geopolitical and economic turns that the year brings. Election years tend to bring more stock market volatility, and this one appears to come with heaping doses of voter anger, fatigue and dissatisfaction, Bank of America’s chief investment office noted in a Jan 30 report. The report cited, among other concerns, “the crisis of democracy and the polarizing U.S. election.” Joseph Quinlan, head of CIO market strategy, and Lauren Sanfilippo, senior investment strategist for Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank, said Americans are “living through a bull market in negativity” that’s just hitting its stride. The report from BofA’s CIO team sought to provide advice that financial...

Managing Employee Benefit Plans: CloudAdvisors 0

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Managing Employee Benefit Plans: CloudAdvisors

A 2024 ICTA nomination Toronto, ON (Feb. 2, 2024) – CloudAdvisors has built a platform for employee benefits evaluation. Employers rely on insurance brokers/advisors to advise, design and renew benefit plans annually. Yet, these professionals often lack the access to data and tools to analyse the strength, or weakness of their clients benefit plans. That’s where we come in. CloudAdvisors began its journey in 2015 with broker automation. Since then, we’ve developed and launched an entire platform in early 2021 that tracks broker clients, leads and prospects, provides an interactive benchmarking dashboard and provides employee benefit Plan Evaluations to plan sponsors for free. We continue to develop new technology and services everyday. Advisors use our platform to retain their top clients through imperative benefits insights and analysis. We also help brokers win new clients by being the ‘carrot’ needed to win over new business. For benefit providers, we provide an open marketplace for them to promote products. We also provide quoting capabilities that allow providers to get their products in front of brokers primed to sell clients on new benefits. For employers and plan sponsors we provide a central source of truth through real data that informs them on the...

An Adaptable All-Purpose Insurance Core System 0

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An Adaptable All-Purpose Insurance Core System

A 2024 ICTA nomination Toronto, ON (Feb. 2, 2024) – B4E Insurtech provides modular, no-code user-friendly insurance infrastructure solutions for Reinsurers, Insurers, and Intermediaries, driving innovation, development and deployment of simple, affordable, digitally accessible inclusive insurance products for the mass-market segments. Our application use case depends upon the nature of the business of our client. Reinsurer: Our platform allows reinsurers to develop, deploy and offer simple rule-based insurance products along with supporting digital infrastructure to Cedents independently, without any dependance or cost impact. Insurers: Our platform allows insurers to deploy and offer simple rule-based insurance products along with supporting digital infrastructure to intermediaries independently, without any dependance or cost impact. Intermediaries: Our platform allows intermediaries such as banks, brokers etc., to source and deploy various simple rule-based insurance products from multiple insurance companies and deploy the same on a single digital platform seamlessly, and start selling within under 30 minutes, without any dependance or cost impact. Value proposition Swift Speed-to-Market: Our partners can now go from product deployment to sales within under 30 minutes, reducing the speed-to-market from anything between 3 to 6 months to within minutes. Zero Upfront Cost: Traditional product deployment costs can start from USD 100,000 and...

Adding Value by Summarizing Medical Records: Wisedocs 0

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Adding Value by Summarizing Medical Records: Wisedocs

A 2024 ICTA nomination Toronto, ON (Feb. 2, 2024) – Wisedocs’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) Medical Record Summary Platform, launched in June 2023, has implemented our state-of-the-art machine learning capabilities to enable customers who process medical records to immediately generate a summary in their medical documents. Designed with the insurance industry in mind, our platform builds off our existing medical record review software to further support stakeholders within the insurance ecosystem to conduct fast and inexpensive reviews. With this innovative technology for the insurance industry, customers can quickly summarize thousands of pages of medical records while gaining intelligent insights across documents by leveraging our generative artificial intelligence. Insurance companies, legal firms, third-party medical evaluators and clinical staff can leverage Wisedocs’ summary platform to gain concise medical summaries, extract key clinical information, and build meaningful and fully customizable medical summaries. Through the Wisedocs platform, users will have access to various features to further address and customize the medical records for review. Key features of this release include an interactive timeline view, summary templates, keyword and date filtering, and an interactive summary annotator. The use of these features further allows customers to quickly review the medical record and gain insights into the claimant’s...

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Liberty Mutual to Eliminate 250 Positions

Article 0 Comments Liberty Mutual has confirmed it is eliminating about 250 positions, or 0.5% of its global workforce, as it continues implementing new organizational structures within US Retail Markets and Global Risk Solutions units. In an email a spokesperson said some employees had been notified off the position eliminations this week but the Boston-based insurer hopes to “minimize the actual reduction by offering opportunities to many of these impacted individuals.” Most of the eliminations will be effective in April or May. “We have been transparent with our employees that we are on a multi-year transformation to ensure our organization is set up for future success and to address the rise of emerging risks,” a company spokesperson said via email. “This means we are reimagining and optimizing our business – including our product portfolio, an intentional focus of our global footprint, and investment in innovation and capabilities – while prioritizing our efforts to focus on how we can provide the most value for our customers, agents, brokers and partners.” The latest news follows a late October 2023 announcement of an additional 850 layoffs on top of about 370 jobs lost in the U.S. as the result of an earlier restructuring....

Tobacco Giants’ Patent Settlement Clears Path for Smokeless Products 0

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Tobacco Giants’ Patent Settlement Clears Path for Smokeless Products

Article 0 Comments Tobacco giants Philip Morris International Inc. and British American Tobacco Plc settled a series of patent suits that clears a path for both firms to bring their cigarette alternative products to US and European markets. The accord ends legal challenges preventing PMI from bringing its IQOS heated tobacco product to the key US market, and now allows BAT to offer its rival Glo product to some European markets. The two companies have been battling for years in a series of patent disputes regarding alternative cigarette products that include vapes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches. Both PMI and BAT have said they have spent tens millions on research and development of nicotine products that they say are safer than cigarettes. In a joint statement, the companies said the settlement includes “non-monetary provisions that resolve all ongoing global patent infringement litigation, encompassing all related injunctions and exclusion orders.” The deal also prevents future claims against current heated tobacco and vapor products, the companies said. While continuing to sell billions of cigarettes each year, the biggest tobacco firms are battling to earn market share with the next generation of nicotine users with the latest alternative products. BAT shares rose as...

10 Best Stocks to Buy Now: Morningstar 0

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10 Best Stocks to Buy Now: Morningstar

Start Slideshow In a new blog post, Margaret Giles, a Morningstar content development editor, names 10 companies that investors may want to own as February begins. Selected from Morningstar’s list of Best Companies to Own in 2024, these companies have significant competitive advantages and predictable cash flows, and are run by management teams with a history of making smart capital allocation decisions. Giles notes that the best companies may not necessarily be the best stocks to buy because the amount an investor pays to own a company is also important. So, the companies on her list have the most undervalued stock prices as of Jan. 30. See the accompanying gallery for the 10 best companies to own. One-year performance is as of Feb. 1. Start Slideshow