Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Insurers’ apparent unease on providing coverage to tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic could be on its way to dissipating as Manulife announces a new specialized travel insurance plan. The Manulife COVID-19 Pandemic Travel Plan, to be launched in October, will be available to Canadians travelling both domestically and internationally, including to countries with a Level 3 Travel Advisory in place. Aside from emergency medical coverage that includes additional coverage specific to COVID-19 and related conditions, the new Manulife travel policy will also provide for trip interruption benefits in the event of quarantine. “The pandemic has had extraordinary impacts on the day-to-day lives of Canadians, and at Manulife, our top priority remains the health and safety of our customers, employees, partners and communities,” Alex Lucas, head of Insurance at Manulife, said in a statement. “This specialized travel insurance is aimed at helping protect what matters most.” The policy comes with the following types of coverage, provisions, and coverage limits: Canadians will be able to avail of the Manulife COVID-19 Pandemic Travel Plan through Manulife’s distribution channels including travel agents, brokers, advisors, and sponsors, as well as for direct purchase through Manulife CoverMe. Read the original article at https://www.lifehealthpro.ca/rss/

Adopting a new mindset, leveraging intelligent processes and collaborating with ecosystem partners will be crucial to meet rising business and customer need Paris (Sept. 15, 2020) – Insurers must explore new ways to build capabilities to meet the digital needs of customers as BigTechs[1] and non-traditional players enter the insurance space, according to the World InsurTech Report 2020 (WITR) published by Capgemini and Efma. With COVID-19 increasing customer engagement and expectations, the World InsurTech Report 2020 outlines a growing opportunity for InsurTechs, as insurers focus on their digitalization efforts. As BigTechs make their presence felt in insurance, the boundaries between insurance, InsurTechs, BigTechs, and tech partners are blurring. Insurers need to improve on high-impact focus areas including customer centricity, intelligent processes, product agility and an open ecosystem to remain competitive. “Insurers have to look beyond other insurance companies as their competitors, and instead include BigTechs and other new non-traditional players, which are often offering a superior customer experience,” said Anirban Bose, CEO of Capgemini’s Financial Services Strategic Business Unit and Member of the Group Executive Board. “Forming scalable relationships with InsurTechs will help insurers digitize faster and more efficiently, deepening their customer relationships and helping them to fend off these...

Blockdata’s technology synthesizes vast amounts of unstructured information about the blockchain ecosystem to enable financial institutions, governments and enterprises to confidently decide on the use cases, companies, and projects they should pursue New York, NY (Sept. 16, 2020) – CB Insights, which enables the world’s leading companies to make smarter technology decisions, has acquired Blockdata, a Netherlands-based software company that tracks the global blockchain economy. Blockdata provides differentiated data and predictive insights on the growing but increasingly complex blockchain and distributed ledger technology ecosystem. Their technology enables financial institutions, governments and enterprises to identify the most credible use cases of blockchain and pinpoint the best companies and projects to work with. Ultimately, this enables clients to drastically reduce the uncertainty, time and effort to go from technology discovery to decision. This is CB Insights’ second acquisition following soon after their July 2020 acquisition of the assets of Dow Jones VentureSource. Both M&A transactions provide CB Insights’ clients with proprietary data and intelligence that will allow them to not just understand but ultimately make decisions about technology more quickly and confidently. The conversation between the companies was kicked off by a cold email and came together fully virtually in less than...

Staff | September 17, 2020 Guardian Capital is forming a collaboration with Moshe Milevsky, a professor of finance at York University’s Schulich School of Business, that focuses on retirement finance. As an academic, Milevsky is currently working on research on the intersections of financial engineering, actuarial science, insurance contingent claims and wealth management, according to a press release. “There is an acute need for innovation to solve the growing challenges and education around how to think about retirement income, portfolio longevity and issues like sequence-of-return risk,” he said in the release. Read: Bob Baldwin appointed chair of C.D. Howe pension policy council Milevsky is the author of 15 books and managing director of PI Longevity Extension Corp., a private consultancy focused on developing concepts to enhance long-term investment strategies with the goal of improving portfolio longevity. “This will be a key area of collaboration for us and we will be working together to develop new and innovative retirement income solutions to address the particular needs of the growing proportion of Canadian investors who are increasingly focused on generating higher income and extending the life of their portfolios,” said Barry Gordon, managing director and head of Canadian retail asset management at Guardian Capital. Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com

Board of Directors green-lights INNOTECH Committee’s proposed solutions to address industry pain points Toronto, ON (July 6, 2020) – CSIO is pleased to announce that its Board of Directors have green-lighted three digital solutions proposed by the INNOTECH Advisory Committee and Working Groups. During the September 15 meeting, the Board of Directors were presented with three business cases for proposed solutions that were collaboratively researched by Committee and Working Group members. The approved solutions will improve the claims and billing customer journeys and standardize APIs. This is a significant milestone for the INNOTECH Committee on its one-year anniversary. The INNOTECH Committee was conceived to gain broad-based representation from industry partners and discuss, analyze, research and propose digital and tech-based solutions that would solve common industry pain points. Meeting throughout the past year, the Committee and Working Groups conducted extensive research to ensure that each suggested solution chosen would have a high likelihood of success and provide broad benefits to the industry and end consumers. The research included business and use cases to test how the solution would positively impact business processes. The next steps to implement the solutions are as follows: Billing and Claims: Leveraging CSIOnet and the eDoc standard,...

Staff | September 17, 2020 The Pension Investment Association of Canada is taking issue with some of the recommendations drafted by Ontario’s capital markets modernization task force, specifically those related to proxy advisory firms. In a recent letter to Walied Soliman, the chair of the task force, the PIAC disagreed with a proposal to introduce a regulatory framework for proxy advisory firms. “It serves PIAC members well to understand the potential conflicts relating to proxy advice that they receive and pay for and are supportive of robust disclosure of relationships, transactions or other interests that might result in a conflict between the interests of a proxy advisor and those of shareholders,” read the letter. “We do not believe it is necessary to restrict proxy advisors from providing consulting services to issuers since we have found the disclosures already provided to be adequate and have not encountered significant conflict of interest problems.” Read: What’s the role of the proxy advisor as rules shift? The PIAC also said it doesn’t support the idea of providing issuers with a statutory right to rebut the advice of proxy advisory firms. More participation by issuers would detract from the objectivity that proxy advisory firms aim to supply, it said. “The ability of investment...

Drug Trends and Strategic Insights report Toronto, ON (Sept. 15, 2020) – As COVID-19 continues to impact the Canadian economy and strain health care resources, these times call for a critical re-think of health care services and benefit plans, with a focus on adopting rigorously-tested solutions that increase the value of drug spend. With these industry realities front of mind, health benefits manager HBM+ is today releasing its inaugural Drug Trends and Strategic Insights report, which presents drug claims and utilization data for HBM+ partner insurers and third party administrators (TPAs), representing over two million claimants and over $1.5 billion in annual adjudicated drug costs. The report examines the latest drug directions and trends, including the use of opioids, biosimilars, and the evolving approaches to reimbursing health care professionals, as well as tangible cost management and health improvement solutions for plan sponsors and advisors. It also provides a glimpse of the future, including the impact of pharmacogenomics, an exciting field that offers the potential to personalize the way drugs are prescribed and ultimately improve outcomes, and calls for the consideration of gene therapy strategies as these expensive new treatments emerge in the health care landscape. “We are relentless at pursuing...

Targeted News Service (Press Releases) Millennials (24-39 years old) are approaching a milestone birthday as the first in the generation turns 40. And as they age, there’s a chance they will become owners and beneficiaries of life insurance policies. Along with new life insurance policies come responsibilities to be aware of, like learning about key information that will ensure that benefits get paid when needed. There is a clear need for better communication about life insurance policies across all generations, according to a new survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). When the beneficiary is younger and potentially newer to the experience, the issue is even more significant. Overall, 55% of millennials surveyed said they are listed as a beneficiary on a friend’s or relative’s life insurance policy, yet only 30% said they are prepared for that role. Lack of preparation — i.e., sharing and being aware of basic information about policies–leads to millions of dollars in unclaimed benefits each year by beneficiaries who can’t find loved ones’ policies or don’t know they exist. Beneficiaries Should Know Policy Basics Advertisement Millennials, who have grown up with cell phones and social media, recognize the power of communication and transparency....

Kelsey Rolfe | September 17, 2020 Claims for medications treating mental-health issues like anxiety and depression reached 97 per cent of 2019’s total claims volume by the end of August 2020, according to new data from Express Scripts Canada. In addition, 2020 has seen a 20 per cent increase in claimants for medications relating to depression compared to 2019. “For the remainder of 2020, there will be a heightened awareness on employee well-being,” said Laura Blair, director of sales for Express Scripts Canada, in a webinar hosted by the pharmacy benefits manager on Wednesday. “Depression is a condition that generally requires longer-term treatment, so these claims will persist and employers will need to consider holistic approaches to care.” Read: Mental health firmly in the spotlight due to impacts of coronavirus, says report Looking at claims by week since the beginning of 2020, there was no large spike in claims for mental-health drugs, but rather “smaller waves . . . of new users that continued through the self-isolation phase [of the pandemic] and into the re-opening,” said Erica Hatherly, Express Scripts Canada’s senior manager of clinical services. “This might speak to the fact that depression has an enduring effect as it relates to the longevity of that self-isolation phase.”...

PR Newswire Globe Life is proud to announce Globe Life Field will host the 2020 Major League Baseball National League Divisional Series, National League Championship Series playoff games, and the World Series. Playoffs are scheduled to begin at the end of September and will run through the month of October. How was Globe Life Field selected to host?In an effort to minimize exposure to COVID-19, Major League Baseball will hold playoff games in four “bubble” locations in California and Texas. Texas was selected to host playoff games and the World Series due to its central location. Globe Life Field, with its state-of-the-art amenities including retractable roof and controlled climate creates a perfect environment for world championship baseball. After a first playoff round is held in participating teams’ ballparks around the country, the league expects to send four National League squads to Houston and Arlington, Texas, with American League contenders heading to Los Angeles and San Diego. The World Series will take place at Globe Life Field. “We are so proud to see the 2020 Major League Baseball playoffs and the World Series Championship come to Globe Life Field,” said Jennifer Haworth, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Globe Life....