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Demand for charitable services is increasing around the world, according to new Charities Aid Foundation research

LONDON, Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Charities around the world say that demand for their organisation’s services has increased over the last year, according to new global research by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).

 

CAF’s World Giving Report: Charity Insights explores the global trends and challenges for over 3,000 charity leaders in 27 countries. The report is being launched at a side event at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and follows the publication of World Giving Report: Donor Insights earlier this year.

Nearly four in five (78%) of charities surveyed say that levels of demand have increased over the last year, with nearly half (47%) reporting these increased significantly. Charities report the increase is due to economic hardship, social crises, and the withdrawal of public services. Charities in lower-income countries (84%) are most likely to report an increase and particularly frontline charities, such as health, poverty relief and humanitarian aid.

The vast majority (83%) of charity leaders also expect this demand to continue to increase over the next year. This expectation is greater in lower-income countries (90%), and particularly for humanitarian aid organisations.

At the same time, when asked about the key challenges they face, three in five (62%) charities said a key concern is achieving financial sustainability for their organisation, referencing shrinking government grants, reduced donations, and increased competition for limited resources.

The research also identified differing attitudes about the influence of government on the sector. Government influence is seen most positively by charity leaders in Asia-Pacific region (32%) and Africa (28%), compared to low levels in South America (8%) and Europe (6%).

Neil Heslop OBE, Chief Executive of the Charities Aid Foundation said:

“As in the UK, funding is the most pervasive challenge for charities around the world. And with ongoing and escalating social division, conflicts, climate change impacts and huge numbers of people displaced, charities that are relied on to offer relief are particularly affected by increasing demand for their services — such as those working in health, poverty alleviation and humanitarian aid.

“While our research shows there is a thriving culture of giving in many places, we clearly need to think differently about how to support non-profits, particularly given the ongoing reductions in government aid and development spending. Encouraging collaboration between charities, and partnerships with government, businesses, and local networks is increasingly critical to build resilience in charities with better outcomes for communities.”

 

FIA: After announcing her candidacy, Laura Villars reaches out to all member clubs

GENEVA, Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Just days after officially announcing her candidacy for the FIA Presidency, Swiss racing driver and entrepreneur Laura Villars, 28, has launched the next key phase of her campaign: she is reaching out to all FIA member clubs worldwide, sending each president a personalized email accompanied by her Profession of Faith.

At the same time, she has already initiated direct phone conversations with several club leaders to listen to their concerns and build constructive exchanges.

After announcing her candidacy, Laura Villars reaches out to all member clubs
After announcing her candidacy, Laura Villars reaches out to all member clubs

In her message, Laura Villars reaffirmed her commitment to the FIA:

“The FIA is our common home. I have belonged to it all my life, both as a racing driver and as a member of mobility clubs. Today, I want to put this experience at the service of a collective project, built with and for the clubs.”

Her Profession of Faith sets out five strong commitments:

  • Independent and transparent governance: elected Audit Committee, autonomous Senate budget, public register of interests, open subsidies dashboard.
  • Fair support for all clubs: Club Support Fund, simplified access to development funds, progressive membership fees reducing costs for the smallest ASNs.
  • Accessible and inclusive motorsport: Women in Motorsport Fund (20 annual scholarships), FIA Young Leaders Academy (25 talents/year worldwide), co-financing mechanisms to cut grassroots entry costs by 20% in three years.
  • Concrete impact in mobility and tourism: “Zero Death by 2035,” 100 Smart Mobility projects in three years, FIA–UNWTO Action Plan, universal FIA digital card.
  • A lasting legacy: FIA carbon-neutral by 2030, FIA Academy of Future Leaders (as a complement to the FIA University).

She reminds clubs that the validation of her candidacy requires 18 official (6 Sporting Clubs / 6 Mobility Clubs / 6 Mixed Clubs) endorsements out of the FIA’s 245 member clubs:

“The choice now belongs to the clubs. They have the power to ensure real democratic competition and open the FIA to the future.”

Laura Villars’s full program will be presented in the coming weeks, ahead of the election scheduled for December 2025.

*The full Profession of Faith is attached to this press release.

PDF: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2779713/Laura_Villars_EN.pdf

 

 

Titomic Celebrates Grand Opening of New European Facility in Heerenveen, Netherlands

HEERENVEEN, Netherlands, Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Titomic Limited (ASX: TTT), a global leader in Titomic Kinetic Fusion™, a cold spray additive manufacturing technology, is pleased to announce the grand opening of its new Titomic Europe facility in Heerenveen, Netherlands. This milestone marks a significant expansion of the company’s European operations, underscoring its commitment to innovation and advanced manufacturing.

The new Heerenveen facility is five times the size of Titomic’s other Europe location in Akkrum, offering a state-of-the-art environment designed to accelerate growth in cold spray manufacturing, coatings, and repair solutions. The facility houses four fully equipped cold spray booths, enabling production across multiple applications and industries. Additionally, the site features a Titomic Kinetic Fusion™ (TKF™) system with an impressive five-meter capability, allowing for large-scale additive manufacturing capabilities. 

“This new facility is more than just an expansion, it’s a testament to the growing demand for sustainable, advanced manufacturing solutions across Europe,” said Klaas Rozema, President of Titomic EMEA, “With enhanced capacity and world-class equipment, Titomic Europe is now positioned to deliver not only our cutting-edge cold spray machines, but also high-performance cold spray parts to our customers.”

The grand opening ceremony was marked by a keynote address from renowned astronaut André Kuipers, who spoke on the importance of innovation and international collaboration in advancing aerospace and technology. His presence underscored the impact of Titomic’s technology in industries where precision, sustainability, and reliability are paramount.

Highlighting the company’s commitment to research and collaboration, Titomic also announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Fraunhofer, Europe’s largest applied research organization. The agreement was officially signed on stage during the grand opening ceremony, symbolizing a new era of partnership in advancing cold spray technologies and applications. 

The Heerenveen facility will serve as a hub for Titomic’s European customers, partners, and researchers, supporting industries including aerospace, defense, energy, and automotive. By combining expanded production capacity with strategic partnerships, Titomic aims to lead the transformation of manufacturing through sustainable, high-performance cold spray technology.

“This grand opening marks a pivotal moment for Titomic in Europe,” added Jim Simpson, CEO and Managing Director of Titomic, “We are not only scaling our capabilities but also strengthening partnerships that will drive the next generation of manufacturing.”

This announcement has been authorized for release by Titomic’s Board of Directors.

Polyplastics’ DURAST (R) Fine Powder Technology Unleashes New Manufacturing Possibilities for Engineering Plastics

TOKYO, Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Polyplastics Group, a global leader in engineering thermoplastics, has announced the introduction of DURAST (R) Powder technology which transforms high-performance resins into fine powders, enabling the use of diverse manufacturing processes from prototyping to 3D printing and mass production.

Image:
https://cdn.kyodonewsprwire.jp/prwfile/release/M100475/202509175298/_prw_PI1fl_rIzB112j.jpeg 

The DURAST (R) Powder technology successfully micronizes high-strength, high-molecular-weight resins — which were previously difficult to powder — into various shapes such as spherical or fibrous forms based on application requirements. In particular, high-performance resins like liquid crystal polymer (LCP) and polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) faced challenges with conventional grinding methods, such as particle agglomeration and reduced flowability. Using Polyplastics’ proprietary technology, DURAST (R) Powder achieves uniform powderization with an average particle size of approximately 1-100 micrometers for LCP. This powder exhibits excellent powder flowability and mixing dispersibility, contributing to process stability and improved quality.

Resins such as polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) and polyacetal (POM) pose significant challenges in terms of micronization due to their low glass transition when processed via conventional grinding methods. In the case of PBT and POM, the glass transition temperature (the temperature above which resin softens) is low, causing the material to easily agglomerate due to friction heat during grinding. The new technique has successfully enabled the powderization of these high-molecular-weight resins. When considering the thermal and mechanical properties of these resins and selecting powderization methods suited for each, the technology produces powders with particle sizes ranging from 20 micrometers to 100 micrometers with a narrow particle size distribution.

DURAST (R) Powder is suitable for additive manufacturing using 3D printers and powder sintering, enabling the production of complex shapes and high-precision parts. Additionally, it is expected to be utilized as a matrix resin for carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics and as an organic filler or reinforcing material.

For more information, visit: https://polyplastics-global.com/en/approach/41.html?utm_source=pr1&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=PR_DURAST_PPS_202509_en 

About Polyplastics: https://kyodonewsprwire.jp/attach/202509175298-O1-u2AMQylH.pdf 

*DURAST (R) is a registered trademark of Polyplastics Co., Ltd. in Japan and other countries.

Alibaba Cloud Unveils Strategic Roadmaps for the Next Generation AI Innovations

Full-stack offerings introduced from AI models to agent development and application platforms and upgraded infrastructure during Apsara Conference 2025


HANGZHOU, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 24 September 2025 – Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today unveiled its latest full-stack AI innovations at Apsara Conference 2025, its annual flagship technology conference. The announcement spans from next-generation large language models from the Qwen3 family, the upcoming Wan 2.5 visual-generation models, enhanced platforms for agent development and application, to major upgrades of its AI infrastructure, reinforcing the company’s global leading position at the forefront of the new AI era.

“In the future, large AI models will be deeply integrated into a wide range of devices, functioning like operating systems — equipped with persistent memory, seamless cloud-edge coordination, and the ability to continuously evolve. We remain committed to open-sourcing Qwen and shaping it into the ‘operating system of the AI era,‘ empowering developers around the world to build transformative AI applications,” said Eddie Wu, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

“Simultaneously, Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a full-stack AI service provider, dedicated to delivering robust computing with maximized efficiency for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud. To underscore our long-term commitment to advancing AI, we will progress with our RMB 380 billion investment plan in AI and cloud infrastructure over the next three years,” Wu added.

Since the launch of the first generation of Qwen in 2023, Alibaba has open-sourced over 300 AI models built on its two foundation models: the large language model Qwen and the visual generation model Wan. With over 600 million downloads and 170,000+ derivative models created, Alibaba’s AI models have become one of the most widely adopted open-source AI series globally. Notably, over 1 million corporates and individuals have used Qwen on Model Studio, Alibaba’s AI development platform.

Unveiling Qwen3-Max: The most powerful LLMs from Alibaba to date

Alibaba officially released Qwen3-Max, its largest LLM model with over 1 trillion parameters. With Instruct (non-thinking) and Thinking modes, the model achieves impressive performance across a wide range of benchmarks especially in code generation and agentic capabilities. For the instruct mode, it scores 69.6 in SWE-Bench, an authoritative benchmark for evaluating LLMs on real-world software issues, on par with some leading closed-source models. It also records remarkable performance on Tau2-Bench, a benchmark that evaluates conversational agents, showing exceptional proficiency in tool use, a foundational capability for building intelligent, action-oriented agents.

A series of Qwen3 models that cover visual language and multimodal processing were also unveiled at the conference.

  • Qwen3-VL: The most capable vision-language model in the Qwen family to date. Its Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture enables flexible deployment from edge devices to high-performance cloud environments. Functioning as a visual agent, Qwen3-VL is capable of operating on both computer and mobile interfaces; It pioneers visual programming by generating code directly from images or videos, effectively turning visual designs into functional applications. Its spatial understanding capability support 3D grounding with enhanced perception of direction and distance, laying critical groundwork for embodied AI and real-world spatial navigation. Qwen3-VL-235B-A22B is available in both Instruct (non-thinking) and Thinking versions, achieving remarkable performance across leading visual perception and multimodal reasoning benchmarks.
  • Qwen3-Omni: a natively end-to-end, multilingual omni-model capable of processing text, images, audio, and video inputs, while delivering real-time, streaming response in both text and natural speech. Powered by a novel Thinker–Talker MoE architecture and pre-trained on 20 million hours of audio data, Qwen3-Omni delivers exceptional performance in understanding audio input (up to 30 minutes) and video-based conversation, all without compromising its strong capabilities in text and image processing. It also achieves real-time multimodal interaction, with ultra-low latency – making it an ideal solution for intuitive, hands-free interaction in intelligent cockpits, smart glasses and mobile phones. Qwen3-Omni-30B-A3B is now open sourced on Hugging Face and Alibaba Cloud’s ModelScope community. Users can also access Qwen3-Omni-Flash on Qwen Chat, a web application that allows users to experience different Qwen models.

Additionally, Qwen3-Coder and Qwen3-Image-Edit have received a major upgrade. The new Qwen3-Coder achieves faster inference speed and enhanced code safety, while Qwen3-Image-Edit has been updated to support multi-image editing with significantly improved visual consistency.

Alibaba also unveiled Fun, a family of speech LLMs equipped with advanced multilingual speech recognition and synthesis capabilities. The series includes Fun-ASR, an end-to-end automatic speech recognition (ASR) model optimized for real-world enterprise deployment, and Fun-CosyVoice, a high-quality, expressive speech synthesis model designed to generate natural-sounding spoken output in multiple languages.

Wan2.5 Preview: Elevates Multimedia Content Creation

At the same conference, Alibaba also previewed four Wan2.5 models, including its latest video generation models, an image generation model and an image editing model. The video generation models natively support high-fidelity audio generation for the video, doubling the duration from 5 to 10 seconds, enabling more complete and coherent narratives with enhanced visual quality. The models feature a natively integrated multi-modal architecture, which is trained jointly on text, audio, and visual data. This allows for aligned multi-modal generation, ensuring synchronized audio and visual content, and enhanced instruction understanding to closely follow user prompts.

New Development Framework for Enhanced Agent Deployment

For improved efficiency of implementing AI agents at scale, a development framework is now added to Model Studio, Alibaba Cloud’s AI development platform. The new framework features Model Studio-ADK (agent development kits), a high-code development framework for enterprise professionals that translates intricate business needs into executable agent logic to enables the rapid development of sophisticated AI agents with autonomous decision-making, dynamic reflection, and iterative task execution capabilities. Remarkably, users can create a DeepResearch or Agentic RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) project within an hour using this robust toolkit. Model Studio has also upgraded its low-code development platform Model Studio-ADP (Agent Development Platform), enabling users with limited programming backgrounds to easily create lightweight AI agents.

Addressing key enterprise challenges such as multi-source data processing, resource constraints, and cross-environment deployment, Model Studio Agent introduces a range of enterprise-grade features. These include seamless connectivity via Model Context Protocol (MCP), RAG multi-modal fusion, dynamic inference scheduling, and sandbox service, allowing enterprises to accelerate the adoption of AI agents.

Currently, users can access over 200 industry leading models via Model Studio, including Alibaba’s self-developed Qwen and Wan models. More than 800,000 agents have been created on Model Studio, supporting diverse scenarios ranging from content creation and intelligent marketing to smart home management and production optimization. Over the past 12 months, number of model calls via Model Studio have increased by 15 times, reflecting the growing demand for robust and scalable AI solutions.

Novel AI Platforms to Support Enterprises and Creators

Following its debut in July, Alibaba Cloud has rolled out major upgrades to AgentBay, a multimodal cloud-based operating environment and expert agent platform for enterprises, developers, and AI partners. The new features—Self-Evolving Engine, custom container images and builtin safety and compliance controls—help transit agents from simple, single model helpers to composite, human-like, multimodal workers that can complete tasks end-to-end.

To meet rising enterprise demand for AI-driven growth, Alibaba Cloud also launched Lingyang AgentOne, a one-stop enterprise AI application platform that enables organizations to move from reactive response to proactive intelligence. Powered by Alibaba’s Qwen models and deeply integrated with the Alibaba ecosystem, Lingyang AgentOne offers an end-to-end agent development workspace to connect with existing systems and accelerate time-to-value. Through scenario-based solutions across marketing, analytics, customer service, and operations, Lingyang AgentOne links the full pre-sales, sales, and post-sales value chain to deliver measurable, production-ready outcomes for industries such as home improvement and e-commerce.

Additionally, Alibaba’s consumer-facing AI application platform Quark launched Zaodian, a onestop AI image and video creation platform that integrates industry leading AI models such as Alibaba’s flagship video generation model Wan to deliver a professional, efficient experience for creators. Apart from the text-to-video and image-to-video functions supported by Wan, Zaodian also offers AI image generation and editing functions with leading model choices. Creators can experience the platform service at website zaodian.quark.cn or via the “AI Image” entry on Quark desktop version.

Next-Generation AI Infrastructure for Agentic AI

At the conference, the cloud pioneer has also unveiled a comprehensive suite of innovative infrastructure upgrades specifically designed to support the emerging agentic AI landscape.

  • Storage: Alibaba Cloud enhanced its Object Storage Service (OSS) with “Vector Bucket,” an AI-powered feature enabling cost-efficient, large-scale vector data storage and retrieval — optimized for RAG and AI apps. It unifies raw and vector data management in OSS, accessible via standard APIs, simplifying scalable RAG platform development and multimedia asset organization. It helps lower the cost of AI development by letting businesses manage both raw and vector data in one place — reducing complexity and accelerating RAG application deployment.
  • Networking: Alibaba Cloud unveiled its latest architecture for high performance network—HPN8.0, a network specially designed for AI models. This innovation enables seamless model training, inference, and reinforcement learning (RL) across mixed computational workloads, while supporting ultra-large-scale deployments. The architecture delivers 800 Gbps network throughput, doubling the capacity in previous generation.
  • Security: Another key update is the addition of an AI-driven agentic function to its Cloud Threat Detection Response (CTDR) solution. This cloud-native security enhancement boosts detection, analysis, and response capabilities, providing a more intelligent and proactive approach to combating security threats. Five AI agents, powered by Qwen, will automate security operations—from alert assessment to execution—with intelligent analysis, event correlation, and actionable reporting for end-to-end threat management. The new function has effectively increased the automated incident investigation success rate from 59% to 74%, while handling 70% automated response actions without human intervention.
  • Container: Alibaba Cloud has upgraded its Container Compute Services (ACS) to enhance its auto-scaling capabilities through optimized scheduling and container image cache acceleration technologies. This enables elasticity, supporting the scaling of up to 15,000 pods per minute to handle massive, highly concurrent agent requests. Besides, the ACS container sandbox technology provides strong isolation by separating user space from the runtime environment, preventing vulnerabilities or data leaks in one agent from affecting others.
  • Database: Alibaba Cloud has upgrades its PolarDB database, optimizing for combined data and AI workloads. The upgrade has introduced a hardware innovation powered by Compute Express Link (CXL) technology, a highly efficient compute-memory interconnect to reduces latency by 72.3%, boosting memory scalability by 16x and laying a solid foundation for data and AI workload. The upgraded PolarDB also introduced a new Lakebase architecture with hybrid storage include lake, operational database and metadata for storing popular open-data formats including Lance, Iceberg and Apache Hudi and lowering storage cost, enabling efficient multimodal data storage and management.
  • Platform for AI (PAI): Alibaba Cloud’s PAI introduced synergistic optimizations to advance large model development into the agentic AI era. Its novel MoE training acceleration improves Qwen series training by over 300%, while the upgraded DiT training engine reduces Wan series’ single-sample training time by 28.1%. Enhanced inference delivers 71% higher TPS, 70.6% lower TPOT latency, and 97.6% faster infrastructure scaling.

Hashtag: #AlibabaCloud

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Alibaba Cloud

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud () is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) services. Alibaba has been named the leading IaaS provider in Asia Pacific by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018, according to Gartner. It has also maintained its position as one of the world’s leading public cloud IaaS service providers since 2018, according to IDC.

Nexteer Showcases Motion-by-Wire Innovations & Shares Insights on Software-Defined Vehicles at MOVE America

Steer-by-Wire, Rear-Wheel Steering, Brake-by-Wire, Software & More in Detroit September 24-25

DETROIT, Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Nexteer Automotive will showcase its latest Motion-by-Wire™ innovations including Steer-by-Wire, Rear-Wheel Steering, Brake-by-Wire and the MotionIQ™ Software Suite during MOVE America, September 24-25 at Huntington Place in Detroit.

In booth #529, Nexteer’s experts will discuss how they are shaping the future of the software-defined chassis for passenger vehicles and adjacent markets, helping OEMs accelerate development and reduce costs while delivering safer, smarter and more exciting driving experiences. 

Visitors will experience an immersive Steer-by-Wire driving simulation and explore innovations, such as:

Nexteer experts will also be available to explore how these motion control technologies can solve technical and business challenges in passenger vehicles, as well as in adjacent markets such as commercial vehicles, off-road vehicles and other mobility segments.

SDV Insights at MOVE America

In addition to its exhibit, Nexteer’s Executive Product Line Director for Software Products, Peter Schmitt, will join a conference panel discussion, “Advances in Software-defined Vehicles,” on Wednesday, September 24 at 1:20 p.m. in the Tech, Data & Innovation Theater #2. Schmitt will also be joined on the panel by experts from Stellantis, COVESA and Mercedes Pay

“The future of software-defined vehicles will be driven by collaboration and co-creation,” said Schmitt. “Nexteer is a trusted partner in this development, bringing our proven expertise in safety-critical motion control with integrated hardware and software solutions to OEMs and millions of drivers around the world. We’re looking forward to continuing conversations with leaders across the mobility ecosystem at MOVE America and to creating the next generation of motion control together.”

About Nexteer Automotive 
Nexteer Automotive (HK 1316) is a global leading motion control technology company accelerating mobility to be safe, green and exciting. Our innovative portfolio supports by-wire chassis control, including Electric and Hydraulic Power Steering systems, Steer-by-Wire and Rear-Wheel Steering systems, Steering Columns and Intermediate Shafts, Driveline systems, Software solutions and Brake-by-Wire. The company solves motion control challenges across all megatrends – including electrification, software/connectivity, ADAS/automated driving and shared mobility – for global and domestic OEMs around the world including BMW, Ford, GM, RNM, Stellantis, Toyota and VW, as well as automakers in India and China including BYD, Xiaomi, ChangAn, Li Auto, Chery, Great Wall, Geely, Xpeng and others. www.nexteer.com 

Link to Nexteer Media Center & MOVE America Press Kit  

Allianz Commercial: Cyber insureds gain momentum against attackers, but supply chain challenges remain

  • Ransomware is the biggest loss driver, accounting for 60% of the value of large cyber claims (>€1mn), while threats posed by supply chains, privacy regulation and social engineering require attention, especially as an uptick in loss activity is expected from Black Friday onwards.
  • Despite the increasing level of attacks, analysis of Allianz Commercial cyber claims shows severity is down by 50% and large claims frequency by 30% during H1 2025 to date, driven by larger companies’ elevated detection and response capabilities.
  • Cyber resilience gaps in Asia Pacific persist amidst an increasingly threatening landscape.

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 24 September 2025 – The cyber risk and insurance landscape in 2025 reveals a complex and evolving threat environment. Large insured companies are becoming increasingly resilient against cyber-attacks with strengthening of cyber security and preparedness and response capabilities helping to mitigate the impact of some of the large cyber losses in 2025 to date. However, the reliance on digital supply chains, impact of expanding privacy regulation, and more sophisticated social engineering attacks targeting employees are also broadening the scope of potential losses for all companies, according to the latest Cyber Security Resilience Outlook from Allianz Commercial.

During the first half of 2025, analysis of Allianz Commercial cyber claims shows the overall frequency of notifications was in line with activity a year earlier with around 300 claims. Despite the increasing sophistication and volume of attacks companies face, claim severity has declined by more than 50%, while the frequency of large loss claims is down by around 30%, driven by larger companies’ cumulative investments in cyber security, detection and response. However, the expanding risk landscape means there is no room for complacency. Ransomware attacks remain the top driver of cyber incidents while the focus of attackers is also shifting to smaller or mid-sized companies which are less resilient against cyber-attacks and data breaches. Overall, the total number of cyber claims in 2025 is expected to remain stable (around 700), with a seasonal uptick in activity expected around Black Friday at the end of November to year-end.

“Several ransomware events have hit the headlines this year, but overall, we see that insured losses from these attacks have decreased in 2025 to date. Insureds’ increased detection and response capabilities are helping to stop some attacks at an early stage. Every step an attacker progresses, and every minute that they are in the system, the impact goes up exponentially. The cost of a ransomware attack that progresses to data theft and encryption can be 1,000 times higher than an incident that is detected and contained early,” explains Michael Daum, Global Head of Cyber Claims at Allianz Commercial.

Ransomware remains biggest driver of cyber insurance claims

Ransomware attacks accounted for around 60% of the value of large claims during the first half of 2025. High-profile incidents across many industries underscore ongoing threats, although there are signs international co-ordination by law enforcement agencies and the strengthening of cyber security by large corporates is having a positive impact. Attackers are also shifting focus to smaller firms, which are typically less resilient than multinationals, as well as firms in other territories, such as in Asia or Latin America. Ransomware was involved in 88% of data breaches at small and medium firms compared to 39% at large firms, according to Verizon.

As large companies have improved their response capabilities, recent years have seen a shift from purely extortion-based ransomware attacks to double extortion including data exfiltration – 40% of the value of large cyber claims during the first half of 2025 included data theft, up from 25% in all of 2024. Losses involving data exfiltration were more than double the value of those without. The average global data breach cost hit a record high at almost US$5mn in 2024, driven by factors such as the impact of stricter data privacy regulation.

The retail sector has been particularly vulnerable to cyber incidents, entering the top three of most impacted industries, according to analysis of large cyber claims over the past five years, accounting for 9% of claims by value after manufacturing (33%) and professional services firms (18%). Retailers often have high revenues, handle large volumes of personal data, and are vulnerable to business interruption, which all provide leverage when making extortion demands. Large numbers of staff, suppliers and IT systems create a wide attack surface.

Meanwhile, an expanding risk landscape is also broadening the potential scope of losses for companies, with non-attack incidents, such as wrongful collection and processing of data, as well as technical failure, accounting for a record 28% of large claims by value during 2024. At the same time, organizations continue to face new challenges and threats from their growing reliance on digital supply chains, the impact of expanding privacy regulation, and the increasing number of social engineering attacks involving sophisticated impersonations of company staff to gain access to company systems.

Cyber resilience gaps in Asia Pacific amidst an increasingly threatening landscape

The Asia Pacific region experienced the most cyber-attacks in 2024, increasing 13% year-on-year and accounting for 34% of attacks globally, according to IBM. This is corroborated by AON, which reported a 22% rise in cyber insurance claims for Asia Pacific in 2024 over the prior year. Ransomware is also a major concern, and accounts for all of Allianz Commercial’s cyber losses in Asia for the first half of 2025.

“A significant number of companies have selected Asia as home for their complex supply chains as well as outsourcing of key business processes. While organizations recognize third-party and supply chain risk, in practice this is a challenge to mitigate and requires significant cross-functional collaboration internally, from the IT, procurement, to legal and compliance departments. Over the past few years, we have seen increased claim activity resulting from IT supply chain risks, in the form of both malicious attacks and technical failures. As a result, there continues to be an uptick in contractually driven cyber insurance purchases. Businesses in Asia, in particular large companies, have also shown an increase in cyber resilience and appetite for cyber risk transfer solutions, although their overall cyber coverage is generally lower compared to American or European peers.

“That said, a significant portion of large organizations still remain self-insured, and the same applies to small and medium enterprises, which are less resilient and more vulnerable to cyber risks. Asian businesses with overseas presence should also consider multinational cyber solutions, especially those with operations in Australia, US and UK which tend to experience more substantial financial losses arising from privacy litigation and data breaches,” says Karlis Trops, Head of Cyber & Tech Professional Indemnity at Allianz Commercial Asia.

“The global cyber insurance market is predicted to more than double to close to US$30bn by the end of the decade, yet penetration remains relatively low. We need to underline that cyber insurance plays an important role in helping build resilience at a time of rapid technological and regulatory change. Many companies remain unaware of the breadth of coverage offered, which can include costs associated with breach response, business interruption, and regulatory fines and penalties,” says Jarrod Schlesinger, Global Head of Financial Lines and Cyber at Allianz Commercial.

Hashtag: #Allianz


The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Allianz Commercial

Allianz Commercial is the center of expertise and global line of Allianz Group for insuring mid-sized businesses, large enterprises and specialist risks. Among our customers are the world’s largest consumer brands, financial institutions and industry players, the global aviation and shipping industry as well as family-owned and medium enterprises which are the backbone of the economy. We also cover unique risks such as offshore wind parks, infrastructure projects or film productions. Powered by the employees, , and network of the world’s #1 insurance brand, we work together to help our customers prepare for what’s ahead: They trust us in providing a wide range of traditional and risk transfer solutions, outstanding and services as well as seamless handling. Allianz Commercial brings together the large corporate insurance business of Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) and the commercial insurance business of national Allianz Property & Casualty entities serving mid-sized companies. We are present in over 200 countries and territories either through our own teams or the Allianz Group network and partners. In 2024, the integrated business of Allianz Commercial generated around €18 billion in gross premium globally.

Kuailu Tech: Unlocking the Future of Enterprise Digital Transformation

SINGAPORE, Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Kuailu Tech, an innovation-driven enterprise specialising in digital transformation solutions, is empowering businesses to bridge the digital divide with cutting-edge AI technology. Its flagship product, Kuailu Cloud, combines proprietary large language model capabilities with low-code development tools, acting as a “universal key” that opens the door to seamless and efficient digitalisation for enterprises of all sizes.

Low-Code Capabilities – Making Transformation Accessible

With Kuailu Cloud’s powerful low-code platform, employees no longer need to be professional developers to build business applications. Through simple drag-and-drop configuration, companies can quickly create workflows that match their unique needs—from basic processes such as procurement requests and leave approvals to more complex modules like sales analytics and inventory management.

This democratised approach significantly lowers the technical barriers to digital transformation, turning it into a company-wide initiative rather than the sole responsibility of IT specialists. The platform also enables businesses to adapt quickly to market changes by modifying or launching new applications within hours instead of months, helping enterprises stay competitive.

AI Intelligence – Driving Transformation Forward

Kuailu Tech’s AI capabilities deliver a powerful engine for enterprise operations:

  • AI-Driven Approvals: Automated voice-to-text recognition and smart routing reduce approval cycles from an average of three days to under one hour, accelerating cash flow and decision-making.
  • Unified Smart Search: Integrating data across ERP, CRM, OA, and document systems, Kuailu’s search tool breaks down information silos, allowing managers to make data-driven decisions quickly and accurately.
  • Kuailu Meeting: Powered by AI, Kuailu Meeting revolutionises corporate communication. From automatic meeting creation and participant invitations, to real-time captioning, speaker recognition, and digital avatars for absent participants, it ensures no key detail is ever missed. Post-meeting, the system generates structured summaries and supports playback for maximum productivity.

Comprehensive Solutions – Supporting Every Business Function

Kuailu Tech offers a robust suite of applications to accelerate enterprise digitalisation:

  • Human Resources: One-stop management for recruitment, attendance, training, performance, and payroll, enhanced by AI-powered candidate matching and automated scoring.
  • Finance: OCR-based invoice capture, automated voucher generation, real-time budget monitoring, and intelligent risk alerts to improve efficiency and compliance.
  • Procurement: Supplier resource integration, automated approvals, and intelligent price comparison to reduce procurement costs by more than 20%.
  • Administration: Online booking for office resources, mobile-friendly approval workflows, and file sharing to streamline collaboration.

Additionally, Kuailu Cloud offers a marketplace of nearly 30 ready-to-use digital templates—including CRM, warehouse management, vehicle tracking, and work order management—helping enterprises get up and running without additional development time.

Security and ROI – Building a Reliable Digital Future

Kuailu Cloud is certified with China’s National Information Security Protection Level 3, offering multi-layered encryption, role-based access control, and full audit trails to ensure data integrity and confidentiality.

Unlike traditional transformation projects that often require high upfront investment and long deployment cycles, Kuailu’s solution offers zero development costs, five-minute pre-installation, and immediate go-live. Enterprises have reported up to 30% cost savings, 50% faster workflows, and significant recovery of production losses, proving Kuailu Tech to be a high-ROI choice for sustainable growth.

Kuailu Tech is a global artificial intelligence enterprise dedicated to driving the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprise office through AI technology. Based on its self-developed large model technology, the company has created a new generation of AI office intelligent entities, with capabilities covering a full-scenario intelligent office ecosystem including “AI intelligent office, AI intelligent collaboration, and AI intelligent meetings”. It is a powerful management tool that helps enterprises make smart, rapid, and efficient decisions.

For media inquiries, please contact:
Marketing Department, Kuailu Technology
Email: huangdr@egretsoft.com 

Official Website:
http://www.egretsoft.com/
http://www.kuailutech.com/ (launching soon)