Insurance-Canada.ca "Chronicle" weekly newsletter
Insurance-Canada.ca - Where insurance and technology meet

APRIL 13, 2021

Connect with us:  Insurance-Canada.ca Home Insurance-Canada.ca Blog - The Intersection Insurance-Canada.ca on LinkedIn Insurance-Canada.ca on Twitter

INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

A Better Approach To M&A: McKinsey
It's easy to understand the allure of really large acquisitions: the best of them can be staggeringly successful. The right large acquisition, carefully mapped to an acquirer's strategy, can vault a company ahead of its peers and earn enviable excess total shareholder returns (TSR). But McKinsey's analysis of hundreds of transactions since 2007 reveals that insurers generated superior excess TSR by focusing on smaller acquisitions and on goals other than building scale. Read more.

Life Simpli Launches Insurance Marketplace
Life Simpli, a new InsurTech startup focused on simplifying the purchase of life and critical illness insurance for Canadians, is pleased to announced its launch. The innovative, easy-to-use web platform enables individuals to assess their insurance needs, compare instant quotes from leading insurance providers in Canada and apply for suitable coverage – all within minutes. Read more.

Germania Goes Live With illustrate inc Platform
Germania Life Insurance Company (GLIC) and illustrate inc are pleased to announce that following GLIC's selection of illustrate inc to lead the digital transformation of its life insurance business, GLIC is live on the OPUS platform as of January 2021. The new platform transforms GLIC's day-to-day processes from mainly paper-based to a fully digital workflow including quoting, illustrations, instant report generation, eApps, eSignature, and more. Read more.

Trov Enables Digital Renters Insurance Offerings
Trov, a global leader in embedded insurance, continues to expand its presence in the UK market, enabling brands to offer digital insurance products to their customers and tap additional revenue streams. With an initial focus on renters insurance, Trov is pleased to announce a new wave of consumer brands will offer digital insurance powered by its innovative technology. Read more.

MMIC Adds Property Online Quoting With Cognition
Middlesex Mutual Insurance Co. is pleased to announce the addition of Residential Property Online Quoting to their existing automobile online quoting platform through partnership with Cognition+. The solution delivers an easy- to-use method of obtaining a personal home and auto quotation. This rounds out their suite of personal lines digital quoting available to their community, brokers and agents. Read more.

Baker & Baker Adds Two New Online Products
Ontario-based insurance brokerage Baker & Baker Benefits is pleased to announce the addition of two new insurance products to their online services: group conversion health and dental plans as well as visitor to Canada insurance. Read more.

Multi-Factor Authentication Critical For IT Security
While insurers have traditionally balanced security against expense and inconvenience to their users, the security threat landscape continues to grow in number and impact. In a new executive brief, Novarica provides an overview of MFA, business drivers and use cases in insurance, current and planned usage among insurers, and profiles 14 prominent providers. Read more.

Canada Life Launches Customizable Term Life
Canada Life is pleased to announce it has launched Canada Life My Term™ life insurance – a new customizable term product that allows customers to pick the exact term length they want, between five and 50 years, to suit their unique needs. Read more.

Hub International Acquires Wessex Financial Inc.
Hub International Limited, a leading full-service global insurance broker, is pleased to announce it has acquired Calgary-based Wessex Financial Inc., an independent employee benefits, life and living benefits firm serving the family and business markets throughout Alberta. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Read more.


ICTA NOMINATIONS

Placing Larger, More Complex Commercial Risks
Relay is a state-of-the-art SaaS platform equipping brokers, wholesalers, and their capacity providers with the leading whitelabelled electronic placement solution in both P&C insurance and facultative reinsurance. Relay speeds up placements by 50% or more, improves client proposal success rates, and automatically organizes submissions to free up brokers' time to capture more business. The platform uniquely supports complex, high-ticket layered placements in addition to simpler, high volume quotes. Read more.

Moving Into The Digital Mainstream
Nude Solutions has developed a fully-functioning digital broker management system, which means brokers and their clients can quote, bind, issue, change, cancel, and renew insurance policies in real-time, from any internet-connected device. The platform also allows brokers to house all their traditional business in the platform. Nude Solutions is cloud hosted and driven by carrier APIs. The platform's ability to connect to carrier APIs allows brokers and clients to get quotes for carrier insurance products. Read more.

Transforming A Brokerage For Customer Service
Committed to premium customer service and determined to digitally transform in order to scale the business, Lepelco selected Applied Epic as their foundational system and Applied CSR24 and Applied MobileInsured in 2017, to enable the digital customer experience and a path to paperless service. After four years as a Digital Brokerage, the team has seen significant business gains across the organization. Read more.

Improving Commercial Insurance Broker Process
Recognizing the lack of innovation in the Canadian commercial insurance space, Fuse Insurance developed a proprietary quote system that improves the daily workflow of commercial brokers. This application process is designed to dramatically decrease the time it takes to turn a new lead into a marketable submission. By asking customers the right questions, we are able to automate the process, improve data accuracy, and put time back into broker's hands as a result. Read more.

“Insurance Made Easy”: APRIL Canada
APRIL ON was launched in the middle of lockdown while APRIL employees and all our brokers were working from home. This was a challenge, but also an opportunity that showcased all the benefits and ease of use of a digital quoting platform. Brokers were able to quote at any time of the day. Their information being directly sent into our internal systems, making the underwriting much more straightforward for our teams. Read more.


The Intersection: Insurance-Canada.ca Blog

What's going through the Intersection
of insurance and technology?

Continuation – The Least Understood Benefit Of Group Insurance?
By Hans Frauenlob, Sentro
Group insurance often has a hugely important feature that is really poorly understood. It is called a “continuation option.” When you are covered by an employer-paid group insurance scheme, that's great, as long as you remain in employment. But when you decide to change jobs, you will no longer be covered by that group insurance scheme. Fortunately, many group insurance schemes offer a continuation option. And some recent improvements in our Sentro platform make handling continuation properly less painful for everyone. Read more.


Insurance-Canada.ca
SideDrawer and Koïos Intelligence
Webinar — Wednesday, April 28

On April 28, two leading InsurTechs take the spotlight to discuss their products and services, and share the challenges and lessons of their respective niches:

SideDrawer – a secure, easy-to-use collaboration service for clients and brokers – represented by Ali Qureshi, Chief Revenue Officer & Co-Founder.

Koïos Intelligence – delivering next-gen, AI- and ML-powered virtual assistants that reinvent CX – represented by François Dufour, Vice President of Business Development.

Learn more or sign up now.


InsurTech Spotlight

In the InsurTech Spotlight this week:

Quotey
Quotey is a software solution for brokers which transforms the commercial insurance sales process from end-to-end: enabling brokers to get multiple insurer quotes for their client in real time or 'go to market' in a smarter digital way. Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.


From Doug

Last week I noted long-standing examples of embedded insurance products (standard, opt-in and opt-out) – warranty insurance for a hard product, travel insurance for a trip.

Many industries are focused on simplifying digital sales and service. Once-and-done and straight-through-processing transactions and processes are growing in number.

More functional core systems, an increasing reliable internet, and functional and standardized APIs are enabling connected process steps. Traditional business partners – brokers and insurers, claim services providers and insurers, other services for everyone – represent major potential volumes of transactions.

Decreased service times lead to improved customer satisfaction and greater efficiencies, all from within the insurance business ecosystem

Think beyond – step outside insurance into the automotive industry. GM, a longtime incumbent, is transforming its businesses, looking for non-traditional and recurring revenue streams. For example, GM is building the exising OnStar telematics business into a platform for selling insurance and other services that can be delivered over the air.

And the implications? Could an auto insurance company be their partner? Is GM starting an insurance company? What would those mean to your insurance business?

If leaders in many industries are like-minded, where will that leave insurance?

Doug Grant, CIP
Partner
Insurance-Canada.ca

Doug Grant

The Chronicle weekly newsletter features news, events, and general information relating to technology and innovation in the Canadian insurance industry and marketplace. Subscribe here or view past issues.

If you would like to recommend an item for inclusion – with a focus on technology in insurance relevant to the Canadian Property & Casualty insurance industry – please contact [email protected].

insurance-canada.ca

Connect with us: Insurance-Canada.ca Home Insurance-Canada.ca Blog - The Intersection Insurance-Canada.ca on LinkedIn Insurance-Canada.ca on Twitter