GRC Report Staff

Independence Blue Cross has agreed to pay $22.5 million to settle allegations that it kept Medicare money tied to diagnosis codes that its own medical-record reviews did not support. The Justice Department announced the settlement Wednesday, bringing a civil False Claims Act case against the Pennsylvania insurer to a close without a determination of liability. The allegations concern Independence Blue Cross, or IBX, and its Medicare Advantage business during payment years 2017 through 2021.

The Financial Reporting Council has revised two UK standards covering the use of external experts, tightening the rules around how auditors and assurance practitioners judge the people whose specialist work they rely on.

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Europe’s heatwaves are already killing people on a scale unmatched by any other climate-related hazard on the continent. The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority now says the consequences are beginning to matter for the assumptions on which insurers and pension providers build their businesses.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven bills on September 21 establishing new requirements for data centers, including measures governing electricity costs, water-use disclosures, resource reporting and environmental review. The package is intended to give communities more information about proposed facilities while preventing the costs of serving them from being shifted onto ordinary utility customers.

Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority has approved new requirements for the accounting firms that audit entities under its supervision, tightening the rules around who performs the work, how firms control its quality and what they must do when a regulatory inspection finds problems.

New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority has given a longer reprieve to climate reporting entities that were supposed to be on their way out of the country’s mandatory disclosure regime but, for now, remain caught inside it.