INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

WSIB Migrates Operations Onto Guidewire Cloud
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and Guidewire are pleased to announce that WSIB has successfully deployed Guidewire PolicyCenter and Guidewire BillingCenter on Guidewire Cloud to power and simplify the company's underwriting, policy administration, billing management and IT operations. Read more.

Applied Commercial Lines Q3 Premium Rate Index
Applied Systems is pleased to announce the third-quarter 2024 results of the Applied Commercial Index™, the Canadian insurance industry's premium rate index. Overall, rates saw a decrease of 5.52% in Q3 2024, which is depressed relative to the rate increase of 7.27% in Q3 2023. Read more.

Newgen, Fadata Join Forces To Optimize Insurance Content Management
Newgen is pleased to announce the integration of Omnidocs, its comprehensive ECM solution build on a low-code platform, with Fadata's INSIS, a cloud-based insurance process management system covering all lines of business. The integration will optimize insurance processing, leading to better operational efficiency and lower costs. Read more.

Protect Group Partners With Blink Parametric
Protect Group, a leader in ancillary travel products has announced a strategic partnership with Blink Parametric to bring advanced parametric protection solutions to travel operators, airlines, OTAs, airports, and other service providers. This partnership introduces Blink Parametric's real-time parametric technology into Protect Marketplace, with immediate effect, enhancing customer satisfaction with Flight Disruption and Delayed Baggage Protection services. Read more.

Jones DesLauriers Partners With Vita Assure
Jones DesLauriers Consulting is pleased to announce a partnership with Quebec-based Vita Assure, effective October 1st, which marks the first benefits-focused partnership for Navacord within Quebec and allows Jones DesLauriers Consulting to enter the province's benefits consulting market. Read more.

B.C. October Storms Insured Damage Total Revealed: IBC
A Category 4 atmospheric river led to intense flooding along the southern British Columbia coastline in October, causing significant damage to properties in Coquitlam, Burnaby, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Metro Vancouver and Surrey. The intense rainfall and strong wind gusts resulted in rivers overflowing and multiple instances of sewer backups, as well as flooded basements, roads and parking garages. Read more.

SIGNAL Unveils Four New Customized Products
SIGNAL Underwriting Inc. is excited to announce four new in-house-underwritten products to complement our existing array of commercial insurance solutions, along with improvements to three of our newly revamped products. Read more.

CBN Announces 2025 Board Of Directors
Canadian Broker Network, Canada's leading network of independent insurance brokers, is pleased to announce its 2024/25 Board of Directors, who were officially sworn in during the company's recent Annual General Meeting. Read more.

Featured job opportunities:

Claims Intake Adjudicator
WorkSafeBC
Prince George / Victoria, BC

Bilingual Claims Adjuster
ARAG Legal Solutions Inc.
Toronto, Ottawa, or Quebec

In the InsurTech Spotlight this week:

Zelros
Zelros is the industry's first AI-driven platform dedicated to advancing insurance distribution. It enables incumbent industry leaders to compete with both fast-growth, technology-first insurance startups and tech behemoths heavily investing in InsurTech. Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.

From Doug AI Agents, Agentic Systems & Small Action Models AI depends on a quantity of quality data and a quality model, just as a good meal is dependent on good ingredients and proper preparation. The initial public thrust of generative AI was based on Large Language Models (LLM), which offer ability to respond to general questions on almost any topic. But are such LLMs a suitable base for company- or industry-specific AI Agents and Agentic Systems? In a Breaking Analysis episode, Cube Research's Dave Vellate, George Gilbert and Scott Hebner explore the shift in AI value creation from large language models to small, specialized, secure models and their evolution into small action models. This transformation is enabling multi-agent systems powered by data harmonization layers, unlocking new productivity paradigms for enterprises. Example: an insurer's process steps to ingest, underwrite, quote and issue a small commercial risk being performed by a series of AI Agents (Small Action Models) while reflecting the insurer's guidelines, data, experience and more an agentic system. The future may lie in an ecosystem of such collaborative small and large models, creating dynamic multi-agent systems that deliver real-time, high-impact business outcomes. – Doug Grant, CIP Partner Insurance-Canada.ca