David Shield, managed by Alon Ketzef, is teaming with White Mountains Insurance Group (NYSE: WTM) on an international overseas travel insurance joint venture. DavidShield and White Mountains will own the venture in equal shares. It will be run by Sharon Haran, who in the past few years has been vice president of business development at Direct Insurance - Financial Investments Ltd. (TASE: DIFI).
The two companies say that, under the agreement between them, an international headquarters will be set up in Zurich which will manage the continued development of the product and its distribution to partners and franchisees around the world. The business of the venture will be the development, marketing and distribution of travel insurance products around the world on the basis of DavidShield's PassportCard platform. In the Israeli market, PassportCard is sold with insurance policies from The Phoenix Holdings Ltd. (TASE: PHOE1;PHOE5).
Overseas travel insurance provides health insurance for short, defined periods of time for people travelling outside their countries. The PassportCard enables insured people to charge a magnetic charge card (MasterCard) automatically in dealing with providers of health services they may require, without the need to submit invoices and without any deductibles (excess).
The companies say that completion of the deal is subject to regulatory approvals, including the approval of the Supervisor of Insurance and Capital Markets at the Israeli Ministry of Finance.
This is White Mountains' second deal with an Israeli connection recently. A few months ago, the group's name was mentioned as one of the parties interested in buying Clal Insurance. In February, it bought control of Israeli insurance price comparison website Wobi in a deal worth tens of millions of dollars.
White Mountains is registered in Bermuda, and has a market cap of $3.7 billion.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 9, 2014
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