Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Onlia is the first insurance provider in Canada to partner with Setter, putting safety at the centre of home ownership for its home + auto customers Toronto, ON (Sept. 9, 2020) – Onlia, provider of home and auto insurance, is the first in Canada to team up with Setter Inc. a digital home safety checkup service. Through this venture, Onlia now provides virtual home safety check ups from Setter to its new and existing customers who bundle home and auto insurance. Setter Inc. provides homeowners with touchless home check ups that identify and analyze risks associated with fire, water and quality of life. Homeowners are provided with an overall safety score in a digital report that prioritizes action items to improve the safety of their homes. “Onlia takes a prevention-first approach to safety,” said Pieter Louter, CEO of Onlia. “A partnership with Setter Inc. enables us to reward our bundle customers with a coach in the corner in creating a safe home environment. This empowers homeowners to improve safety for themselves and their families.” Following initial reports, Setter’s concierge home manager alerts customers with seasonal reminders ranging from changing smoke alarm batteries, to cleaning eavestroughs. It also connects customers directly...

Staff  | September 14, 2020 The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System’s venture capital arm, OMERS Ventures, is participating in a series-A funding round for Klue, a Vancouver-based competitive enablement company, which it also backed at the seed stage. Klue helps companies better understand their competition by collecting and curating competitive intelligence, combining information available on the Internet with knowledge from the company’s employees. “The company has created a way to use the latest machine learning to track and curate information that will immediately give a company’s sales teams, customer service reps, account managers or product marketers the upper hand,” said Eugene Lee, an investor at OMERS Ventures, in an online statement. Read: OMERS Ventures boosts funding to health benefits technology startup OMERS Ventures was joined in the $15-million, series-A funding round  by other investors including funding round leader Craft Ventures, Rhino Ventures, BDC Venture Capital and several angel investors. “For years now businesses have had a problem: how do they tap into useful data from across the company and the market to the benefit of their business?,” said Lee. “For a while, it was called big data. Then it was business intelligence. Whatever label you choose to give it, the challenge has...

Staff  | September 14, 2020 Nearly half (45 per cent) of U.S. employers see investments in health and well-being as an integral part of their workplace strategy, compared to 36 per cent that said the same in 2019 and 27 per cent in 2018, according to an annual survey by Business Group on Health. The survey, which polled 122 large employers with a total of more than nine million employees, noted this is spurred in part by the coronavirus pandemic, which is shining a light on the connection between employee health and well-being and overall business performance. In particular, the survey found virtual care is here to stay, with some 80 per cent of respondents saying virtual care will have a significant impact on the way care is delivered in the future. In addition, 53 per cent of respondents said they intend to implement more virtual care solutions, while 36 per cent said they’ll expand their mental-health services and 31 per cent will develop a more focused strategy for high-cost drug claims. Read: How OPG is leveraging virtual care to improve health access Looking further at mental health, the survey found employers have doubled down on mental health and emotional well-being. The vast majority (88 per...

PR Newswire Liberty Global Transaction Solutions (Liberty GTS) has announced findings from its inaugural M&A claims study. “Having issued more than 2,000 policies since 2010 and managed over 300 notifications of warranty breaches across the globe, we are in a unique position to uncover M&A claim trends that can help deal makers and advisors better understand and manage their exposure,” said Liberty GTS President Rowan Bamford. “This is vitally important now as the M&A insurance industry grapples with four key challenges: an over-supply in capacity, a significant drop-off in deal flow, an increase in claims activity and the emerging risks caused by COVID-19.” Key study findings include: Impact of COVID-19 – While COVID-19 has yet to result in a noticeable increase in M&A claims activity, it is possible that the pandemic may result in certain types of claims becoming more common, such as those related to labor issues or key customer insolvency. Notifications are rising – There has been a noticeable uptick in notifications over the last few years, with about 19% of policies now receiving a notification. However, no more than 25% of these notifications result in actual claims – a statistic that has remained relatively consistent over the...

KPMG teams with Majesco to leverage Digital1st® Insurance platform to enable digital strategies and business models for insurers moving towards a Connected Enterprise Toronto, ON (Sept. 9, 2020) – Majesco, a global leader of cloud insurance software solutions for insurance business transformation, and KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm, are working together to accelerate insurance digital transformation using Majesco Digital1st® Insurance platform. Digital1st® is the insurance industry’s leading cloud-native, microservices-based digital experience platform with a low code / no code configurability and a robust API and partner ecosystem apps. Combined with Majesco’s industry leading CloudInsurer® core insurance platform, it provides insurers with an unparalled end-to-end capability enabling insurers to become more connected with their clients, agents and brokers. “Digital transformation is a top strategic priority for insurers, particularly in today’s new reality with everyone seeking digital options,” said Mike Adler, Principal, Insurance – Management Consulting, at KPMG. “Customer and agent experiences and increasingly digital expectations require insurers to rapidly innovate and adapt to acquire and retain customers, drive operational effectiveness, enable productivity of distribution channels and meet the needs of a new generation of customer. Our partnership with Majesco will help insurers meet these needs rapidly to compete...

Two additional events add to Alberta’s challenging summer for severe weather Edmonton, AB (Sept. 10, 2020) – Severe weather events have hit Alberta hard over the spring and summer months. Four events from April to August brought the insured damage total for natural catastrophes in the province to $2 billion, based on surveys from to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ). Two storms have most recently contributed to this total over the summer. A storm that hit the Calgary, Drumheller, Airdrie and Strathmore areas on July 24 topped $135 million in insured damages and resulted in over 10,000 claims. A storm that occurred over the August 2 and 3 caused an additional $58 million in insured damages, bringing the insured cost of the two summer storms to more than $190 million. “Weather has hit our province hard this year,” said Celyeste Power, Vice-President, Western, Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC). “The insurance industry is working to process the nearly 100,000 claims from the four spring and summer weather events, to ensure Albertans get back on their feet as quickly as possible.” Strong thunderstorms developed across south-central Alberta on the afternoon of July 24. Several of these strong storm cells crossed through...

Best’s Market Segment Report Oldwick, NJ (Sept. 8, 2020) – Canada’s property/casualty insurance industry thus far has fared better than their life counterparts amid the volatile economic and market dynamics created by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a AM Best report. In its Best’s Market Segment Report, titled, “COVID-19 Taking Its Toll on Canada’s Economy and Insurance Industry,” AM Best states that the country’s overall insurance industry remains well-capitalized. However, for Canada’s life insurance industry, top-line growth has been materially affected, as consumers reacted to COVID-19-fueled economic strain, and agents and life insurance representatives transitioned with varying degrees of success to a digital sales environment. Life insurers’ operating earnings also have been impacted because of the market dynamics and asset valuations, and earnings likely will be pressured by the prolonged volatility in the equity markets and low interest rates, leading to lower fee-based revenue as well. In April, AM Best revised its outlook on Canada’s life insurance industry to negative, owing to the significant disruption to the financial markets caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. AM Best remains concerned about companies with higher exposures to commercial mortgage loans, particularly in the hotel and retail segments, as well as office space, given...

John Carroll LL Global, Inc., the parent organization for LIMRA and LOMA, today announced it has hired John Carroll to lead its National Accounts team. He will report to Sean O’Donnell, senior vice president, LL Global Member Relations and Sales. Carroll has served in executive positions for leading financial services companies over the past 25 years, including Merrill Lynch and Allianz Global Investors. Most recently, he was head of intermediary client relations for Epoch Investment Partners, where he was responsible for developing and executing business plans to improve client coverage, deepen engagement, and drive growth. “COVID-19 has presented unique challenges for our members as economic and physical conditions have redefined their business operations and goals. It is critical that LL Global not only develop timely and indispensable resources that support our members, but build a dynamic relationship team that can transform our engagement strategy and ensure we deliver unique value to our membership and to the industry we serve,” said O’Donnell. “Throughout his career, John has focused on developing new processes, building teams and leveraging data to enhance the client experience while improving business results. We are confident that John will bring the same energy, business acumen and leadership to...

Staff  | September 14, 2020 The world’s 300 largest pension funds saw their assets under management increase in value by eight per cent in 2019, to a total value of US$19.5 trillion, according to new research by Willis Towers Watson’s Thinking Ahead Institute. This is compared to a 0.4 per cent decline in the value of assets in 2018. “Overall, the world’s largest pension funds staged a strong rebound in growth in 2019, following a tough market environment the year before,” said Roger Urwin, co-founder of the Thinking Ahead Institute, in a press release. Read: Five Canadian pension funds rank in top 100 global asset managers: report “However, this positive result does not detract from the multiple pressures currently facing pension funds, from concerns around solvency levels to rising expectations with regards to [environmental, social and governance] considerations and, in particular, climate and social issues.” Urwin also noted the ramifications of the coronavirus crisis and anticipated economic uncertainty ahead that will make pension fund boards’ agendas more complex. When looking at the top 20 pension funds, assets under management saw an 8.1 per cent increase in 2019 and a compound annual growth rate of 5.5 per cent over the past five years,...

A group of U.K. researchers have shared their findings on how race, age, and comorbidities impact mortality among patients with COVID-19 in a newly published study. The paper, published on PLOS and titled Comorbidities Associated with Mortality in 31,461 Patients with COVID-19 in the United States: A Federated Electronic Medical Record Analysis, comes from a team of authors from Liverpool Center for Cardiovascular Science, University of Liverpool and Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital in the United Kingdom, as well as TrinetX. A global health research network based in the U.S., TrinetX describes itself as “the market leader in protocol design, feasibility and site selection” for clinical trials. It covers 150 healthcare organizations across 25 countries, and collaborates with most of the corporate leaders into the industry, including 13 of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies. The researchers analysed data from de-identified electronic medical records of COVID-19 patients across a network of 29 healthcare organizations in the U.S. The network was searched between January 20 and May 26, 2020, and the sample population had a median age of 50 years, with 54.5% being female. “We determined associations between age, sex, ethnicity, comorbidities, and death with COVID-19 during the study period,” the authors...