.insurance

Status:	Proposed
country:	International
Manager:	fTLD Registry Services, LLC for (BITS & ABA Partnership) Radix
Registry Provider:	Verisign for BITS & ABA ARI Registry Services for Radix
Type:	Community gTLD, Generic
Community:	insurance community
More information:

.insurance is a proposed new generic top level domain name gTLD) to ICANN's New gTLD Program. The applicants for the .insurance string are BITS, the technology policy arm of Financial Services Roundtable in partnership with the American Bankers Association (ABA) and Radix, a subsidiary of Directi Group.

ABA & BITS Bid

ABA and BITS confirmed their application for the .insurance and .bank TLDs in a press statement released on May 31, 2012. Craig Schwartz, head of operations for Financial TLD Initiative said that the partnership aims to "provide the highest security for the millions of customers conducting banking and insurance activities online and to ensure the safety and soundness of the industry." ABA & BITS application for both domain name strings is supported by a number of financial services organizations including the Australian Bankers’ Association, American Bankers Insurance Association, British Bankers’ Association, European Banking Federation, Independent Community Bankers of America and the the International Banking Federation. The partnership formed the fTLD Registry Services, LLC to manage and operate .insurance and .bank domain name space.

Radix Bid

Radix, a newly created subsidiary business of Directi Group also confirmed its application for the .insurance TLD. The .insurance string is one of the 31 gTLDs being applied for by the company with an allocated budget of $30 million. Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Radix is prepared to face a string contention and an auction for the string. He also expressed that he is open to establish partnerships with other applicants. ARI Registry Services was chosen by Radix to serve as its back-end registry services provider.

Top-Level Domain