Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

GreenShield Responds with Free Therapy Initiative to Support All Canadians Toronto, ON (Mar. 27, 2025) – As Canada-U.S. trade tensions escalate and the cost of living continues to rise, new data reveals nearly half of Canadians are experiencing heightened anxiety, with tariffs quickly emerging as one of the top drivers. Last month, GreenShield—a proudly Canadian-owned and operated non-profit health and benefits company—partnered with Mental Health Research Canada (MHRC) to identify key trends and gaps in care for Canadians amidst growing economic and political uncertainty. The data revealed a significant spike in anxiety over the past month, with the rising cost of living and political tensions with the U.S. reported among the top stressors for Canadians. According to this new data: In 2024 there was a declining trend in the number of Canadians reporting negative mental health impacts due to economic conditions; however, the start of 2025 marked a sharp spike, with: 42% now reporting the economic downturn is negatively affecting their mental health, and 39% worrying about the possibility of not being able to pay their bills. Nearly 50% of Canadians reported increased anxiety in the past month, with concerns highest among lower-income households and women. Almost 40% of Canadians...

New York, NY (Mar. 26, 2024) – Accenture is launching new capabilities, accelerators and training to help organizations build and scale generative AI solutions and agents that enhance the impact of the integrations of Google Cloud’s Gemini models and Salesforce’s Agentforce, (see backgrounder). As a leading transformation partner for both Google Cloud and Salesforce, Accenture will help clients capitalize on this strategic moment with packaged accelerators to drive growth and reinvent business workflows and customer experiences in the agentic era. The industry- and function-specific accelerators leverage Accenture’s understanding of customer processes, extensive data and AI engineering skills, and expansive industry and functional experience from across the Accenture and Google Cloud joint generative AI Center of Excellence and the Accenture Salesforce hub for generative AI. The accelerators will help drive more robust and intelligent AI-driven processes by harnessing real-time data insights to help identify operational efficiencies and empower organizations to deliver more personalized and impactful customer experiences faster than ever before. “Accenture is doubling down to bring its extensive ecosystem and customer domain capabilities and deep AI engineering skills together with the collective innovations from Google Cloud and Salesforce to accelerate value for our clients,” said Lan Guan, chief AI officer,...

Governments and insurers must work together urgently to prepare communities and households for wildfires, floods, windstorms and hail while improving Canada’s response to and recovery from these increasingly frequent and severe disasters — By Craig Stewart, Vice President, Climate Change and Federal Issues, IBC — In the last decade, more than 880,000 Canadians and 87,000 businesses have suffered financial losses due to damage caused by severe weather and natural catastrophes, with property & casualty insurers paying out more than $30 billion in claims for these types of events. Beyond these numbers lie the hard-to-quantify costs to society in terms of lives disrupted, homes lost and financial hardship experienced by individuals, families and businesses. In addition, Canadian households pay deductibles and shoulder non-insured losses, while governments absorb impacts to infrastructure and rely on tax payers to fund disaster assistance. The vast majority of those affected are low- and middle-income Canadians and small and medium-sized businesses. Ten years ago, Canada began to take significant action to tackle climate change. As a country, we focused on reducing carbon emissions, and have allocated $41.8 billion since 2016 to fund mitigation measures, such as those that affected or worked toward the reduction of Canada’s greenhouse...

Yearly nation-by-nation ranking of world’s business environments reflects global economic strains, innovation challenges and increasing cyber threats Johnston, RI (Mar. 12, 2025) – Commercial property insurer FM Global has released the 2025 FM Resilience Index, its yearly ranking of 130 countries and territories by the resilience of their business environments. New in 2025, the index now includes proprietary FM data to provide a comprehensive picture of cybersecurity risk. Denmark claims the top position in the index for the second straight year, thanks to its high productivity, educated populace and robust cybersecurity. These are three of the index’s 18 resilience-scoring factors, which consist of macro risks, such as inflation and political risk, and physical risks, such as climate risk exposure and fire risk quality. The next nine regions in the ranking are Luxembourg at No. 2, followed by Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Belgium and the United States Zone 3 (the central US)*. The index includes data from third parties like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, as well as FM risk exposure and improvement measures. “The FM Resilience Index delivers unique insights to navigate the complexities of a rapidly changing world,” said Leo Kushner, staff vice president, manager...