INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

Grocery Retailer Issues Update On Coronavirus
Those who have been shopping recently will have seen extraordinary numbers of people in stores, long lines, and bare shelves as Canadians stocked up their kitchens and medicine cabinets. First and foremost, do not worry. We are not running out of food or essential supplies. Our supply chain is responding to the spikes in volume and getting the most important items back in stock. Read more.

Business Implications Of COVID-19: White Paper
With Coronavirus spreading around the world, Ecclesiastical Insurance has published a white paper examining how businesses should prepare. The company has also created an accompanying self-assessment checklist to help organizations understand their current level of preparedness. Read more.

Coronavirus Now Considered A "Known Issue" By Travel Insurers
Canadian Association of Blue Cross Plans are advising eligibility restrictions for trip cancellation coverage provided through its travel insurance policies regarding the Coronavirus pandemic. Effective March 12, the Coronavirus is no longer an unknown risk when customers purchase trip cancellation with their travel insurance. This applies to individual personal policies only. Read more.

Ecosystems & Platforms: Vision To Reality
As traditional industry borders fall away, ecosystems and digital platforms will greatly influence the future of insurers. Insurance executives are looking beyond industry borders to understand the growing opportunities and threats that come from new partners and competitors in the ecosystems relevant to them, from mobility to healthcare and beyond. Read more.

Swiss Re, Microsoft Enter Strategic Alliance
Swiss Re and Microsoft Corp. have announced a strategic alliance to further advance insurance innovation and extend financial protection to more people globally. At the centre of the alliance is Swiss Re's Digital Market Center, which will help develop next-generation, large-scale tools to transform the way the insurance industry predicts and manages risks. Read more.

CMT Launches Mobile App To Reward Safe Driving
Cambridge Mobile Telematics, the world's leader in mobile telematics and behavioral analytics, is pleased to announce the public release of its Safest Driver platform, making widely available the app proven to reduce phone distraction and other risky driving behaviors by almost half in as little as 30 days. Read more.

Canadian Insurers Using Third-Party Data For CX, AI Investments
The need to cut costs, satisfy customer expectations, and meet the needs of artificial intelligence investments with large data sets is pushing Canadian insurers to leverage third-party data more than before. In a new report, Novarica reviews multiple insurance industry use cases and profiles 42 data providers. Read more.

Factoring Climate Risk Into Financial Valuation
The University of Waterloo has developed a tool to help capital markets incorporate climate change and extreme weather risk into investment decisions. Researchers at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation developed a risk framework which will help to measure risk and guide investments by incorporating the impacts of climate change into business analysis. Read more.

PolicyMe Raises Funds To Simplify Purchase Process
PolicyMe is excited to announce it has successfully raised a CAD 3.3 million round of funding from a syndicate of international and domestic investors. With this new financial injection, PolicyMe can further capitalize on its early success by enhancing the life insurance buying process with new technology and financial literacy tools. Read more.

Private Capital Crucial To Climate Resilience
Severe weather events and demographic challenges are putting an increasing strain on government finances, requiring a rethink of how catastrophic events are funded and a greater use of public-private partnerships to manage risk, according to leading global risk and reinsurance specialist Guy Carpenter & Company. Read more.

Innovation More Than Just Tech: Novarica
Innovation is a matter of management structures and talent strategies as much as technology, according to a new brief from Novarica which encapsulates key themes from the company's seventh semi-annual Silicon Valley Innovation Tour. Read more.

Equisoft Launches Investor Benchmarking Tool
Equisoft, a leading global provider of digital business solutions, is pleased to announce a new benchmarking application tailored to the insurance and wealth management industries. Read more.

Advisory Committee Shortlists Proposed Solutions
The CSIO INNOTECH Advisory Committee met again to present their recommendations on potential solutions to address industry pain points identified at the last meeting. The committee approved moving forward with solutions proposed to improve claims and billing notifications and API industry standardization. Read more.

Amerisure IMS Partner On UBI Telematics Program
Amerisure, an elite, US-based property & casualty insurance company, and IMS, a global telematics solutions provider to insurers, mobility operators, enterprises, and governments, have teamed up for a commercial fleet usage-based insurance (UBI) telematics program in Michigan. Read more.

Report Impaired Driving To Police: SGI
This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the Report Impaired Drivers program in Saskatchewan, and SGI is urging all Canadians to help make roads safer by reporting impaired drivers to police. Read more.

Keep up-to-date on the spread of COVID-19:

See the latest coronavirus news & updates.

The Broker’s Workstation (TBW) is an all-in-one broker BMS solution from CSSI. TBW features real-time rating and data exchange for faster, more effective quoting.

See how CSSI's Broker and MGA solutions can make your business more efficient.

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

SkyWatch.AI
SkyWatch.AI uses telematics and AI to provide drone pilots with on-demand, personalized, and flexible drone insurance policies by the hour, month, and year. Our advanced mobile app and web platform allow pilots to customize their coverage and produces documentation instantly. Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.

We asked some of the Young Insurance Professionals of Toronto for their outlook on the industry...

Q: How do you see the upcoming technology landscape changing the insurance industry or propelling it into the future?

A: The technology landscape is evolving at an incredible pace. While the insurance industry has not been an early adopter of leveraging technology, the sparks have recently ignited a fire. Insuretechs are emerging rapidly. Technology is being harnessed to develop new efficiencies. The distribution model is an area of great opportunistic potential. New, seamless systems will replace inefficient distribution models. Platforms will be developed to integrate with one another and create a fast, and efficient on-boarding process. Technology will ease the data collection stage and eliminate the need to manually repackage it for the insurer and the BMS. Imagine a totally integrated system to collect the data, relay it over to the insurer in real time, communicate with the insurer’s APIs and have it seamlessly populate into a universal database. Technology will relieve the human resource from redundant, trivial tasks allowing it to focus on higher value aspects of the customer service experience.

Featured job opportunities:

Commercial Lines CSR – Ribo License
Vachon Insurance Group
Etobicoke, ON

Commercial Lines Manager
Cornerstone Insurance Incorporated
Prince Albert, SK

From Doug Dramatic action taken by governments, businesses and other parties to slow the spread of Covid-19 underscored the impact it could have on all of us. It's “all hands on deck” – everyone needs to pitch in and help, whether by imposing self-quarantine or buying groceries for an elderly neighbour. Earlier in the week, not knowing what was coming, I attended IBC's Insurance Fraud Forum, which highlighted the extent of the industry's fraud problem and reinforced the message that it is not a victimless crime. The Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police very eloquently addressed the fraud problem, how the OPP is tackling it and the need for increased collaboration among those addressing the problem. That same point was made by participants in two different panels. One included diverse Canadian groups – Ministry of Health, Workers' Comp, Life Insurers and P&C's IBC. The second was P&C-centric but geographically dispersed – UK, USA, New Zealand and Canada. The message was clear: everyone needs to collaborate and regulations must be revised where necessary to better enable fraud prevention, detection and prosecution. Like fighting a pandemic, we are in this together. Doug Grant, CIP Partner Insurance-Canada.ca