INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

The Top Global Risks In 2025: WEF
The World Economic Forum's 2025 Global Risks Report reveals an increasingly fractured global landscape, where escalating geopolitical, environmental, societal and technological challenges threaten stability and progress. Read more.

AI To Bring New Age Of Autonomy To Business
The Accenture Technology Vision 2025 report explores how the future is being shaped by AI-powered autonomy and finds that a new era of digitization is unfolding, in which AI continuously learns and drives new levels of autonomy across organizations, positioning trust in its performance as the most important measure organizations will need for AI to achieve its promise. Read more.

Crawford Technologies Introduces AI-driven Accessibility For Transactional Documents
Crawford Technologies is pleased to announce the availability of AccessibilityNow® SmartSetup, a solution that leverages the company's AI-powered functionality, called AutoSense, to automatically create templates for making high-volume transactional documents into accessible documents. Read more.

Year-End Commercial Lines Premium Rate Index
Applied Systems® is pleased to announce the final quarter 2024 results of the Applied Commercial Index™, the Canadian insurance industry's premium rate index. Overall, the magnitude of rate increases was down across all lines relative to average premium renewals in the same quarter last year Read more.

Geotab, Vitality Partner To Optimize Commercial Fleet Performance
Geotab Inc. and its affiliates, a global leader in connected transportation solutions, and global behavior change experts, Vitality, have formed a joint venture to tackle their shared mission to improve driver safety and well-being, reduce risk and support better road safety, bringing together telematics data with behavioral science, in a first-of-its-kind solution. Read more.

New CARFAX Vehicle Build Score Revolutionizes Auto Insurance Risk Assessment
CARFAX, the leader in vehicle history data, along with Pinnacle Actuarial Resources, a renowned actuarial consulting firm, have developed an innovative score designed to modernize and replace traditional vehicle symbols. The CARFAX Vehicle Build Score utilizes the full 17-digit VIN to help insurers refine their rating by better understanding a vehicle's value and specific attributes through a simple score. Read more.

Distracted Driving Top Concern For Drivers: Survey
Desjardins Insurance, one of Canada's largest property & casualty insurers, has released its annual survey on the top risks faced by Canadian drivers, and distracted driving was ranked as the number-one risk for the third consecutive year. Read more.

The Carsharing Telematics Market: Berg Insight
IoT analyst firm Berg Insight has released a market report, The Carsharing Telematics Market – 6th Edition, which analyzes the latest developments in the carsharing market. This report explains all segments including station-based and free floating public carsharing as well as corporate carsharing. Read more.

Westland Acquires Youngs Burlington West
Westland Insurance, one of Canada's fastest-growing insurance brokers, is pleased to announce that it acquired Youngs Insurance Brokers' West Burlington operation, effective February 21st. Read more.

Canada Invests In Satellite Constellation To Monitor Wildfires
With the objective of strengthening Canada's wildfire monitoring capacity, the federal government has announced an investment of $72 million for the design of a WildFireSat constellation consisting of seven microsatellites tailored to monitor active wildfires across Canada on a daily basis. Read more.

Single Canadians Struggling To Save: Survey
Financial confidence is growing, but this isn't translating to a better idea of retirement for one particular group. A new survey from Co-operators shows that Canadians are feeling more confident in their finances compared to previous years' surveys, but the long-term outlook is murkier for singles. Read more.

In the InsurTech Spotlight this week:

Alert Labs
Alert Labs designs and manufactures a suite of smart building sensors that are on the cutting edge of property protection. The sensors are easy to install and use, and do not require WiFi. They connect to a cellular network to provide real-time monitoring and 24/7 alerts with analytics to reduce property damage, repair costs and utility bills for residential and commercial properties. Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.

Featured job opportunities:

Intermediate Commercial Underwriter
Aviva Canada
Calgary, AB

Manager, Underwriting (Personal Lines Multi Line)
SGI
Regina, SK

From Doug A 2024 Statistics Cananada survey of businesses examined usage of AI in Finance and Insurance (F&I). Common uses of AI were: • Virtual agents or chatbots – 67% • Data analytics – 34% • Speech/Voice recognition – 31% • Natural Language – 31% • LLM – 28% • Text analytics – 24% • Decision making systems – 21% That was nine months ago. The number of businesses and depth of functionality have both increased since then. Interestingly, there was little change to their number of employees after adopting artificial intelligence. Will that change, or will the competitive need to do more, better, faster keep headcount steady? Paul Carroll, editor-in-chief of Insurance Thought Leadership, contends that insurance must do more in “Experimentation With Gen AI Must Be Far Bolder.” Generative AI will likely alter the business models of many industries; insurers should go beyond seeking efficiencies and experiment with deeper changes. One obvious area for exploration: the use of insurance data and expertise to predict and prevent losses. Today, insurance companies generally monetize their data and expertise through products. Is there a massive new pool of service revenue for those who define it and tap it? Yes – that requires a new business model. Doug Grant, CIP Partner Insurance-Canada.ca