INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

Canada's Changing Climate Report
The Government of Canada has released its Canada's Changing Climate report, a valuable tool for governments who are looking for ways to adapt and make their communities more resilient. The report concludes that Canada is seeing the effects of widespread warming and projects that they will intensify in the future. Read more.

The Future of Connected, Autonomous Vehicles
What might a future world look like where all transportation is via autonomous vehicles? Although we might be decades away from this vision, thinking through the possibilities yields useful insights for today's strategies. SMA's latest research report, Connected Vehicles and Insurance, provides some practical advice for strategists by identifying the potential value levers in the evolving connected vehicle area. Read more.

Digital Fitness For Smarter Decisions: PwC
Organisations should focus on developing stronger digital skills and capacity in their risk function in order to make more informed decisions about risk in a technology-driven world, according to the eighth edition of PwC's Risk In Review study. Read more.

Aviva Ally Makes Transacting Small Business Easy
Aviva Canada is proud to announce the launch of Aviva Ally, a solution that provides commercial insurance brokers with a variety of ways to submit their small business insurance application and easily access Aviva's new small business coverage, Aviva Onpoint™ insurance. Read more.

Financial Services Mobile Apps Vulnerable
Wherever financial services companies fail to apply application shielding and threat detection technologies to their apps, they leave a monumental attack surface exposed to hackers. Aite Group's latest report highlights vulnerabilities in 30 financial institutions' mobile apps, revealing a widespread absence of application security. Read more.

Chatbots Growing in Importance: Novarica
Insurers are increasingly considering chatbots to deliver a frictionless, simplified customer experience. In a new report, research and advisory firm Novarica provides an overview of insurance use cases, the state of chat technology, its intersection with artificial intelligence, and managing potential customer concerns. Read more.

Beazley Launches Design Build Liability Offering
Beazley has launched a comprehensive professional liability insurance coverage designed to meet the needs of construction contractors and design/build firms in Canada. Design Build provides comprehensive first- and third-party liability cover including full access to Beazley's market-leading breach response team, BBR Services, in the event of a cyber or data breach. Read more.

Crawford Launches Smart Water Solution
Crawford & Company®, the world's largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management and outsourcing solutions to insurance companies and self-insured entities, has launched the industry’s first smart water detection and mitigation solution to address escape of water claims. This ground-breaking, turnkey claims management solution delivers a rapid and effective response to water loss claims initiated by wireless sensors that detect water leaks. Read more.

Eddy To Present On Smart Leak Protection
Eddy Solutions is pleased to announce they will present a session on “Smart Leak Protection: IoT Solutions to Reduce Claims” at the RIMS 2019 Annual Conference & Exhibition, exploring how smart water monitoring can significantly reduce water related claims in both residential and commercial insurance. Read more.

NW Ontario's First InsurTech Hackathon
Hack IT, Northwestern Ontario's first InsurTech hackathon, was held Mar. 29-30 at Ingenuity, Lakehead University's student business incubator hub, in Thunder Bay. Read more.

Introducing The New Canada Life
Three iconic Canadian brands are coming together under one brand to better serve their customers. The Great-West Life Assurance Company, London Life Insurance Company and The Canada Life Assurance Company have begun a journey to move to one brand in the Canadian market: Canada Life will become the new brand under which the organization will create, deliver and communicate products and services in Canada across all of its lines of business. Read more.

Co-operators Acquires Credit Union Advantage
The Co-operators is pleased to announce that they have reached an agreement with Central 1 to purchase Credit Union Advantage Insurance Brokerage Ltd. (CUAIB). Concurrently, CUMIS – a fully owned subsidiary of The Co-operators – will become the insurer for coverages currently underwritten by CUPP Services Ltd. upon expiry of the current policy terms. Read more.

Hub International Acquires Del Fisher Insurance
Hub International Limited, a leading global insurance brokerage, is pleased to announce that it has acquired Calgary-based Del Fisher Insurance Inc. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Read more.

Navacord Adds Mitchell & Abbott Group
Navacord Corp, Canada's fifth largest commercial broker, is pleased to announce is it advancing its growth strategy with the addition of Hamilton-based The Mitchell & Abbott Group Insurance Brokers Limited, effective April 1, 2019. Read more.

Arthur J. Gallagher Acquires Keyser Benefits Corp
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. is pleased to announce the acquisition of Calgary-based Keyser Benefits Corp. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Read more.

Marsh & McLennan Completes JLT Acquisition
Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. has completed the acquisition of Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc, furthering its role as the world's preeminent professional services firm in the areas of risk, strategy and people. Read more.

Homebuilders’ Construction Risks: Chubb
In response to the many costly exposures facing homebuilders and developers, Chubb has issued a new whitepaper on risks facing homebuilders during the construction of new homes and communities which can severely impact the project's budget and completion, including property damage and destruction, construction material loss, weather-related losses, fire, theft and vandalism. Read more.

Tips To Prepare For Flood Season: IBC
With the warmer weather bringing spring showers and snowmelt across the Prairies, also comes the threat of flooding. The spring flood outlook indicates that this year's flood levels will be at or marginally above levels seen across the Prairies in 2009, the second-highest since the Red River Floodway was constructed. Insurance Bureau of Canada has tips to help homeowners prepare for flood season. Read more.

The InsurTech Spotlight features insurance practitioners and InsurTech(nology) providers which are – or are becoming – InsurTechs. In the spotlight this week are:

Skopenow
Using social media and open source data, Skopenow mitigates fraud and risk for claims and underwriting teams. Skopenow provides a hands-off, “cradle to grave” approach to fighting claims fraud using instant behavioral and relationship analytics. Learn more.

BrokerLift
brokerLift is an eCommerce Platform purpose-built for brokers to digitally sell “transactional” products to their customers from their preferred insurance partners. The platform integrates digital products into the Broker's website, email and other branded experiences. Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.

Featured job opportunities:

Customer Service Representative
Vince Ippolito Desjardins Insurance
Burlington, ON

Insurance Advisor
Specialty Life Insurance
Concord, ON

“Insurance In The Platform Economy”

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

ICEF2019 will bring together industry thought leaders, insurance pioneers who are taking advantage of new models and platforms, and solution providers with products and services to help insurance practitioners move ahead.

Speakers include Donald Light, Director of North America Property & Casualty Practice, Celent, and Denise Garth, SVP Strategic Marketing, Majesco.

Explore the new insurance horizon and find out how to prepare your business to compete in the emerging Platform Economy.

Mark your calendar for Wednesday, August 28:

Are you looking to feature your organization's thought leadership? New or enhanced service? Expansion or evolution of an existing product?

Webinars are a great way to promote a product or service to an audience.

Insurance-Canada.ca can assist you create, promote and execute a webinar geared toward your insurance practitioner customers – insurers, MGAs, Brokers, and/or services suppliers.

Many of our past webinars are available to watch on-demand. Access free thought leadership from key players including OneSpan, X by 2, Kanetix, Google, IBM, The Co-operators, and many more.

Contact your sales rep or email info@insurance-canada.ca for more information.

From Doug Continuing from last week, we turn to extending the reach of an insurance platform. Insurance organizations have been tackling digital transformation for most of this century, first with upgrades to a “modern” core policy, claims, broker system. Those with a vision of “innovation” sought out opportunities to go one step beyond, to leverage the culture and technologies at hand. Take this as your platform, add a dash of agility, a touch of customer focus and a practice of broad collaboration, and voilà, we have InsurTech. As an example, Gore Mutual introduced uBiz less than four years ago; the first fully ecommerce commercial insurance platform in Canada. It was targeted at the small home-business market. The product was marketed by selected brokers at that time. From the broker's website, a small business owner would complete online a simplified quotation request, accept the quote, agree to the terms and conditions, make credit card payment and receive full policy documents, all digitally, all at one time. For more details, read Gore's ICTA nomination. Over these same recent years, a singular focus has been on the customer and the insurance experience: be helpful, reduce the number of questions, make it simple and understandable, respond quickly – all of those things each of us likes to have in any purchasing experience. Doug Grant, CIP Partner Insurance-Canada.ca