Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Staff  | August 25, 2020 Ivanhoé Cambridge, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec’s real estate arm, is entering into an agreement with real estate logistics specialist LOGOS Group to acquire a development site in Australia. The organization plans to develop the site, located in one of Melbourne’s key infill northern industrial suburbs, into a $230 million logistics estate with LOGOS acting as the manager and developer. The former distribution centre will be transformed to deliver more than 120,000 square metres of modern logistics assets as the LOGOS Broadmeadows Logistics Estate, according to a press release. Read: Ivanhoé Cambridge forms partnership for investment in Indian logistics facilities “This transaction continues our strategy for logistics in the [Asia Pacific] region and our partnership with LOGOS,” said George Agethen, senior vice-president of Asia Pacific at Ivanhoé Cambridge, in the release. “We remain focused on assembling a sizeable portfolio in Sydney and Melbourne, which has shown remarkable resilience through the COVID‑19 pandemic. We are confident that we will deliver an environmentally leading estate that will meet the demands of our users for the long term.” The estate, which is aiming to start construction in early 2021, will be focused on supporting the core logistics sectors of e-commerce, distribution, food and cold storage. “This is a strategic acquisition for our business as a number of our...

Martha Porado | August 25, 2020 The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan posted a negative return of 0.4 per cent in the first half of 2020. “The pandemic has brought some specific challenges,” said Jo Taylor, the plan’s president and chief executive officer, on a conference call on Tuesday. “Global economic growth has come to a standstill, job losses have spiralled upwards, consumer and worker confidence are at all times lows and stock markets remain volatile, inflated and uncertain.” However, given the dramatic headwinds, the pension fund is weathering well, he added, noting its exposures to large retail real estate, airports and the energy sector were sore spots for the period. Read: Ontario Teachers’ posts 10.4% gains for 2019, focuses on maintaining certainty The plan spent the years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic fortifying the portfolio against a potential downturn in equities, noted Taylor. “After 10 years of continuous economic expansion, we felt it prudent to plan for a downturn. The key components of that defensive positioning were an increased exposure to fixed income and a more managed exposure to equities.” And this higher exposure to fixed income was part of an “important cushion for the portfolio during the March collapse in global financial markets,” said Ziad Hindo, the...

Staff | August 25, 2020 While intangible assets like human capital and culture are increasingly at the forefront of employers’ concerns, frameworks to manage these factors are lagging, according to a new paper by Willis Towers Watson and the World Economic Forum. As the world resets to a new reality amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it noted, it will be critical to an organization’s success to create concrete methods for measuring the performance of these factors. The crisis allows for comparisons of different employers’ reactions in terms of their human capital, said the paper. Where government supports allowed, such as in the European Union, employers typically held on to their workforces as much as possible. In other cases, it became necessary to put workers on furlough, with most employers choosing not to set specific time limits on those arrangements. Others set up reduced work weeks, among many ad hoc solutions. And these actions were accompanied by pay cuts, with more organizations cutting C-suite salaries than workers’ compensation at large. Read: Employees less confident in employers’ ability to provide benefits With this backdrop, employers are rethinking “how, where and by whom work is done,” the paper said. “By designing with the constraints of today’s business environment in mind, organizations are...

Staff  | August 24, 2020 iA Financial Group is partnering with Homewood Health to provide plan sponsors with access to the latter’s employee assistant program. The EAP, available à la carte, is now offered as part of the insurer’s health and wellness offering, called Well-Balanced. “We are confident that this partnership will provide our clients and their plan members with the professional support they need to help them address issues that affect their mental health and well-being,” said Andrée-Anne Bourgeois, director of products, marketing and communications and group benefits and retirement solutions at iA Financial Group, in a statement to Benefits Canada. Read: iA Financial Group introduces online group benefits enrolment tool Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com

Staff | August 24, 2020 Toronto-based disease prevention technology company Newtopia Inc. is introducing a product suite aimed at preventing, reversing and slowing the progression of three chronic conditions. Targeting plan members of employer-sponsored health plans, the tools aim to assist users with hypertension, type 2 diabetes and weight management. They combine human interaction, virtual care, digital tools and data science to deliver personalized programs. The heart health product encourages users to increase their physical activity, gives them nutrition recommendations, helps them stop smoking and provides stress management tools. Read: What are the top chronic diseases in the workplace? The type 2 diabetes prevention offering is personalized to help the user improve their health, reduce their blood glucose and lower their insulin resistance by adjusting their nutrition and incorporating low glycemic foods into their diet. It also features a daily cardio and strength exercise routine and techniques to improve sleep. The weight management offering teaches users about healthy food options and gives them education and tools around insulin resistance and cardio and strength exercises. It also aims to generate awareness around emotional eating, focus on stress and sleep management and support behavioural change. “Now more than ever, it is vital for organizations to ensure the health and safety of their population,” said Jeff...

The InsurTech startup, known for its instant, scalable insurance policies, will build a new type of coverage to protect small businesses from COVID-19 and future pandemics Toronto, ON (Aug. 11, 2020) – Thimble, the InsurTech startup that helps small businesses succeed on their own terms, has been selected to the Lloyd’s Lab innovation accelerator program, where it will develop solutions to support the market to respond to COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, many small businesses have learned that their business interruption insurance does not cover losses related to COVID-19. This has resulted in severe blowback on the industry, along with multiple lawsuits pitting small and midsize businesses against their insurers. As part of Lloyd’s Lab, Thimble will tackle this issue head on. The startup, known for its instant insurance policies of flexible duration, will develop low-limit parametric contingent business interruption coverage to protect businesses from COVID-19 and future pandemics. By doing so, Thimble will position insurance as a “first line of defense” that pays small businesses immediately if specific criteria are met– essentially providing an “instant stimulus” while governments figure out the rest. “Traditional insurance policies do not work for pandemics because most policies will pay out at the same time,”...

June Spotlight results show strong enforcement: Drivers advised to keep their #HeadsUp and #JustDrive Regina, SK (Aug. 21, 2020) – We get it. The past few months have been … eventful. We’ve all had a lot on our minds. Still, that’s no excuse to drive distracted (or drive impaired, or not wear a seatbelt, or break speed limits). Yes, you may be hitting the road to make the most of these last few weeks of warm and sunny weather. While many of us are enjoying summer, our agricultural producers are working hard to get their crops off the field. The work farmers do puts food on our tables and contributes to the  economy. And they need everyone’s help to keep safe. Some things to keep in mind when driving around farm equipment: Be patient – farm equipment is very slow-moving. If you find yourself behind a big piece of machinery – be patient, and pass when it is safe to do so. Again, be patient – Farmers are usually only transporting their machinery from one field to another, so they won’t be on the road for long. Even if you don’t get an opportunity to pass safely, you won’t be...

AI-driven recommendation engine and census scrubber unveiled Ottawa, ON (Aug. 21, 2020) – Global IQX, the leading provider of AI-driven solutions for group insurance providers, has launched two new AI-powered products, including the most advanced recommendation and predictive analytics engine in the group insurance industry. Global IQX’s latest advancements in artificial intelligence include a new AI-powered Recommendation Engine and an AI Census Scrubber, components within the IQX Workbench, an end-to-end platform currently used by 25 top group insurers across North America. IQX’s new Recommendation Engine allows insurers to make quoting recommendations for both new and existing client renewals based on demographic similarities and other data points such as size and industry. Launching a Recommendation Engine as complex as IQX’s is a bold undertaking in the insurance industry, where data is highly sensitive and not publicly available. Advanced artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms were used to overcome this barrier, allowing Global IQX’s clients to benefit from actionable insights without sharing their data. “It’s very exciting,” says Junaedur Rahman, artificial intelligence expert, and development lead for the initiative, “there’s nothing else like it in the group insurance industry.” The other new component within IQX’s suite of digital products is the AI-powered Census...

Toronto, ON (Aug. 20, 2020) – COVID-19 has fundamentally changed the way consumers and brokers interact, and Aviva is pleased to share the results of a recently commissioned survey to gauge consumer sentiment on the impact of the pandemic. This study analyzed the key consumer trends and insights to help you better understand the insurance customer and how they are making decisions during COVID-19. Here is a summary of the findings in three key areas: Employment status: 13% of Canadians report a change in their employment status as a result of COVID – half of this group has been temporarily laid off and the remainder has lost their jobs. Canadians under the age of 30 are feeling the largest impact. 12% of Canadians feel their situation will get worse in the coming months. While half of Canadians report there has been no change to their household income (HHI), the remaining 50% have had a cut in HHI. The impact ranges anywhere from 10% to as high as 75%. Regardless of employment status or HHI, 75% of Canadians either have a lot or some uncertainty when it comes to planning for the future. One in five have a lot of uncertainty....

More and more attackers are using ransomware as a final step in multi-staged attacks; defense, then, requires layers Boston, MA (Aug. 12, 2020) – There are two kinds of organizations: those that have endured a ransomware attack and those that likely will. In each case, weathering the storm is a matter of preparation, which, as in most things, is easier said than done. Here’s why: There is no single technology that prevents ransomware, and there are many kinds of ransomware attacks. This Aite Group report explores some of the most critical defenses an organization can put in place and profiles 16 vendors: BlackBerry, Broadcom, Bufferzone, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Cybereason, FireEye, Microsoft, Morphisec, Nyotron, Panda Security, Proofpoint, SentinelOne, Tanium, Virsec, and VMware. To form the basis of this report, Aite Group spoke with 11 security executives representing both midsize financial services organizations and several of the largest banks in the world as well as 15 of the 16 technology vendors profiled in this report. This 31-page Impact Report contains one table. Clients of Aite Group’s Cybersecurity service can download this report and the Executive Impact Deck. Click here for the online summary or to download the table of contents. This report mentions...