2020 People’s Choice Award

ICTA 2020 Awards Ceremony and Reception

Discover the winners Tuesday, Feb. 25, in Toronto

Browse the 2020 Nominations  |  Winners will be announced at ICTC2020

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The People’s Choice Award

The ‘PICTAs’ returned once again for 2020. The public chose the winners; you were the jury for three People's Choice Technology Awards.

The winners were revealed at our 18th annual Technology Conference on Feb. 25, 2020.

The People’s Choice Award

The ‘PICTAs’ return once again for 2020. It's your turn to choose the winners; you will be the jury for three People's Choice Technology Awards.

  • Browse the contenders below (in alphabetical order);
  • Cast your ballot by Friday, February 21 (voting has now closed).

Please note: the survey can only be taken once from a single device; votes cannot be changed after they are submitted.

Your voting helps to recognize the organizations whose use of technology is having a positive impact on the business of insurance.

The winners will be revealed on Feb. 25 at our 18th annual Technology Conference at the end of Day One; the awards ceremony will be followed by an industry networking reception.

Follow along, and encourage your colleagues to vote, with the hashtag #PICTAs2020 on Twitter and LinkedIn.

2020 PICTA Winner

Aviva Canada

Aviva improves auto claims process with new analytics tool

Aviva Canada Inc. has deployed a real-time analytics service that helps claims adjusters decide rapidly and confidently at first notice of loss if damaged vehicles are likely to be repairable or total losses, without the need for an appraisal to be completed. The new service, deployed on Aviva’s data science platform, leverages data and predictive analytics via API called directly from the Guidewire ClaimCenter Claim Wizard user interface. Thanks to the new tool and a number of supporting technical innovations, the claim lifecycle, rental costs, and storage costs have decreased dramatically, and customer satisfaction has significantly improved.

2020 PICTA Runners-Up

First Runner Up

Duuo by Co-operators

Duuo tackles on-demand opportunity with Slice

Created by The Co-operators in 2018, Duuo is a digital insurance brand that provides on-demand solutions to meet the needs of Canadians participating in an innovative and fast-paced digital economy.

To launch its first product, Duuo teamed up with Slice Insurance Cloud Services. Slice’s machine learning technology allows for on-demand quotes, through an easy-to-use interface. Potential customers simply have to input the location of their home, the type of property and their contents limit for an immediate quote to be given. From there, they can purchase nightly coverage in minutes. If a claim is made, the same machine learning technology can begin collecting information on the claim while also efficiently controlling for fraudulent submissions. The Duuo platform includes a chat bot as well as licensed reps to help further support customers.

Since launching, Duuo has continued to work with Slice to expand its portfolio of products.

  • Technology by Slice Insurance Cloud Services.

Second Runner Up

Cognition+

Cognition+ Community Transforms Reporting & Analytics

The Cognition+ Mutual Insurance Community has enabled greater insights into their entire business operations through the implementation of the Cognition+ Insurance Analytics utilizing the Insurance Template for Qlik Sense through their partnership with Cognition+ and BizXcel. This template meets the specific needs of Mutual companies who were seeking to extend their reporting and analytics through dashboards. This template includes Governance, Operations, Agent/Broker Performance and Workflow applications that allow everyone from Board of Director’s to Executives and staff to analyze and monitor the financial health of the company, analyze day to day operations, and monitor performance including planning of pending work. This template addresses data analytics from multiple perspectives and allows companies to work more efficiently in both a centralized and decentralized environment. In less than 18 months, the rollouts of these capabilities were completed by 20+ companies, which speaks to the ease of adoption and efficiency of the process.

  • Technology by BizXcel Inc.

2020 PICTA Nominees

Apollo Exchange

Apollo Exchange platform enables brokers to instantly transact insurance online

Apollo Exchange is a technology platform that enables brokers to instantly transact insurance online.The Exchange offers brokers three tools: Broker Portal, Launchpad, and Program Automations. The free Broker Portal allows individual brokers to browse insurance products, receive immediate quotes, transact policies, and documents are issued in real time — no contract or volume commitment required. Become a digital brokerage overnight with APOLLO’s Launchpad, a white labelled eCommerce solution that allows clients to self serve 24/7. With Program Automation, digitize an existing portfolio or binding authority using proprietary APOLLO technology.

CNA

Improving the broker-insurer marine renewal process

The Marine Simplified Renewal Process reduces underwriter and broker touchpoints on smaller premium, lower complexity renewal accounts. This simplified process allows brokers to answer a few renewal questions from their electronic devices when the responses meet the qualifying criteria, the account is then bound and issued within a week. This simplified process provides our underwriters with more time to get ahead of their more complex renewals and provides better service to our brokers on their new business submissions.

The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group

Commonwell empowers brokerages with real-time quote & bind

With the launch of Commonwell Connect, The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group has empowered brokerages with technology to support once and done quote and bind processes for new business automobile and property lines of business. The approach supports long standing feedback from brokers regarding single sign-on and single entry and delivers an ease of use design with the broker in mind.

New members (policyholders) of The Commonwell will experience a much more engaging onboarding process through accuracy of policy quotation and binding and issuance of policy fulfillment within 24 hours.

Crawford & Company (Canada) Inc.: Performance Hub

Crawford launches Performance Hub quality management tool

Crawford has developed a proprietary quality management tool called Performance Hub to help its adjusters, supervisors and managers view the “health” status of all open files in real time and prioritize employee time and effort. Algorithms are used to assign a file “health” score to each file. Employees are presented with a ranked list of files requiring attention which updates itself dynamically as file activities are completed. Since implementation, Performance has helped increase file health scores by 11% and achieved the established corporate benchmark. More than one-third of Crawford’s employees have earned a perfect “healthy” score on 100% of open files and over 2/3 have earned a “healthy” score of over 95%.

Crawford & Company (Canada) Inc.: YouGoLook

Crawford streamlines auto claims with self-service app

In 2019 Crawford launched the YouGoLook self-service app that makes it easy for customers, employees, and anyone else to submit their own photographs, videos and notes related to their insurance claim. Crawford’s Vehicle Services team leveraged the technology to accelerate the industry shift from field-based appraisals of damaged automobiles to desk-based appraisals. When a new appraisal request is received the team at Crawford Vehicle Services will deploy the self-service app to the policyholder to help document the damages to the vehicle. From there, a desk appraiser prepares an estimate of the damages for further handling by the adjuster. This technology has eliminated travel time, reduced time to complete an appraisal by 60% and lowered costs by as much as $275 per loss.

Export Development Canada

EDC implements repeatable customer-centric product innovation system

Recognizing the evolution of international trade and the needs of customers, EDC, a traditional insurance and financing provider, established a third product line, Knowledge Services, to solve for the persistent market gaps and challenges its customers faced. EDC’s product team embarked on a customer-centric innovation journey to innovate, test, design and develop a suite of digital products that would scale to address the needs of many more companies than EDC had traditionally served. Established as an independent digital product team within the organization, it is also connected strategically to the existing financial lines of business to offer a more holistic exporter experience, expand EDCs value proposition to more companies and transition “Knowledge” clients into new “Financial” clients over time.

  • Technology by Deloitte and Microsoft.

LowestRates.ca

LowestRates.ca eliminates pain points with home insurance quoter

The LowestRates.ca home insurance quoter was designed to eliminate notorious pain points in the quoting process for consumers. To get an accurate home insurance quote consumers are typically required to look up detailed information about their home that they do not have immediate access to, such as the replacement cost (something many confused with the purchase price of the property). If these are not provided accurately, which is all too common, then their quote can be wildly inaccurate. Our quoter doesn’t just give you a quote – it also compares the market for you, allowing you to quickly and easily find the lowest rate from Canada’s top home insurance providers.

Mitchell & Whale: Goliath

Mitchell & Whale benefits from in-house lead management system

What do you do if the lead management software out in the market doesn’t quite do what you need it to do? Build your own, of course! Launched in December 2018, Goliath is Mitchell & Whale’s in-house lead management and reporting system, and to our knowledge, the best and most robust lead management system built specifically for insurance brokers.

Mitchell & Whale: Quotey

Mitchell & Whale simplifies commercial insurance with new business CRM

Commercial insurance brokers have lived without the same technology as their personal lines counterparts for too long and those days are ending. No longer will brokers need to play endless telephone tag with clients to gather the right information to create insurer submissions. No longer will brokers need to stick their heads up and shout out in the office, “Anyone know an insurer who will write [Insert Customer Type Here]?!?” Quotey is one of a number of tools being developed with the aim of making business insurance not suck in 2020!

Onlia

Onlia reinforces safe driving with free app powered by IMS

Onlia Sense is a free mobile app that reinforces safe driving behaviors while highlighting the benefits of mindful driving awareness. Drivers have the option to sign-up for a connected insurance program, on-demand insurance and other value-added services. Through Onlia Sense, Onlia (the parent organization) has entered Canada with an innovative, 100% pure digital insurance strategy that introduces a unique rewards system to drive engagement alongside an insurance cash-back approach – differentiating itself form more common UBI discount approaches.

Onlia Sense is powered by IMS’ SDK – providing the background telematics technology and data collection capabilities, enabling Onlia to focus on a rich, engaging customer UX experience.

Onlia Sense is proven to help make roads safer for Canadians. Statistical data accrued by IMS indicated that incidents of distracted driving—one of the most frequent causes of accidents—were reduced by 29 percent overall during the span of a recent program study when Onlia Sense is in use!

  • Technology by IMS.

Storm Insurance Group

Storm Insurance builds out its digital strategy

As insurance broker and consumer demands grow for digital application issuing systems, and the need to be able to conduct business 24/7, Storm Insurance knows the importance of adapting to the ever-changing world of e-commerce.

In 2019, the Storm Insurance Group (a national multi-distribution insurance solutions company) set out to accelerate its digital insurance business strategy with help from its own, in-house Innovation Hub.

Throughout the past year, the Storm Insurance Group’s in-house Innovation Hub has created and implemented products and services that have changed the way we do business, such as its recently launched www.myinsurancerenewal.ca. This Innovation Hub designed platform took a week-long, manual application entry process and reduced it to only a few hours work. Additionally, the ability to conduct business online through our Online Underwriter Portal and ZipSure Light will have great impact on the overall insurance industry and the future of the customer buying experience.

UW Insure Brokers

Building a broker system with ERP and new technologies

Digital Transformation has gone beyond seeking what a company could buy and plugin the next day. A true disrupter will turn the entire corporation around, uprooting existing ways of doing business and changing the status quo into something new. This takes a lot of courage and convincing.

In the last decade, brokers have seen huge shifts in the world of insurance, and without a doubt, more changes are underway. What we need to do is to ensure that we are as ready as possible for these changes. Several big tech companies, including Google and Amazon, are stepping into the world of insurance, and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining traction among insurance brokers. More than ever, it is important to adapt to consumer behavior. We share how we disrupted our processes using Enterprise Resource Planning and cutting-edge technology.

Discover the results Feb. 25 at ICTC2020

The ICTA and PICTA winners were announced and the nominees celebrated at the 2020 Insurance-Canada.ca Technology Conference on Feb. 25, 2020.