The ICANN Board of Directors approved the resolution waiving registrar insurance requirement which was earlier imposed to all domain registrars. The ICANN domain names vice-president Cyrus Namazi reported it in the official blog. Earlier, all domain registrars concluding an agreement with ICANN had to maintain Commercial General Liability with policy limits of at least US $500,000. This measure is supposed to protect the registrants' interests in case of registrars' mistakes, for example, at untimely extension of name registration terms, etc.
But following 18 months of ICANN's research, it showed that the great majority of companies offering insurance services do not include such incidents in the list of insured cases. Thus, it is not necessary to speak about registrants' protection of interests. On the other hand, a high cost of such insurance quite often appeared to be an excessive burden for the companies-registrars – first of all, in the developing countries of Africa and South America. For instance, the cost of insurance with policy limits of US $500,000 in Nigeria exceeds the GDP per capita almost by 157 times.
ICANN supposes that the waiving of registrar insurance requirements will help to stimulate the growth of the registration service market – first of all, in developing countries.
