Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Staff  | August 19, 2020 The value of assets held by Canadian trusteed pension funds fell 3.3 per cent to $2.02 trillion in the first quarter of 2020, according to new data from Statistics Canada. Despite the quarterly drop, the funds posted a year-over-year increase of 2.5 per cent. Statistics Canada’s update noted the overall decrease in the quarter was mitigated by the performance of the largest 10 funds, which hold nearly 50 per cent of the total assets and whose market value fell an average of just 1.5 per cent. “The onset of COVID-19 affected the market value of assets held by Canadian trusteed pension funds,” it said. “However, the decrease in value was not as sharp as the 21.6 per cent drop in the [S&P/TSX composite index] in the first quarter. The smaller declines in pension fund assets can likely be attributed to active management and the diversification of their holdings.” Read: Value of assets in trusteed pension funds up 3% in first quarter: Stats Can Looking by assets type, short-term investments were up by nearly a third (29.7 per cent), followed by mortgages (one per cent), real estate (0.7 per cent) and bonds (0.3 per cent). On the other hand, stocks were down sharply, at negative 15.7 per cent, while...

Last week, Rise People announced the launch of Canada’s first advisor engagement platform, which promised to “modernize the group insurance sales and administration process from end-to-end.” And according to Julie Bevacqua, the company’s president, that move represented the latest step in addressing an ever-present need. “What we find is that when it comes to the employee experience, clients are demanding flexibility with their HR technology,” Bevacqua told Life and Health Professional. “At the same time, advisors are wanting to offer this best-in-class local group benefits experience to their clients, and they also want to offer a modern digital experience.” With the demands of both advisors and client companies in mind, Rise took the opportunity to work with both stakeholder groups to develop that solution. The goal sounded straightforward enough – to make the benefits experience powerfully simple across the ecosystem – but arriving there required checking off items on a very comprehensive wish list of features. “A key element at the forefront of those discussions was the necessity for simple workflow,” Bevacqua said. “Advisors were looking for solutions that digitized enrolment. They’ve asked us for access to an online marketplace that even hosts their offers, not necessarily from carriers, like...

Canada’s largest life insurance company has appointed a new leader to help steer its ongoing shift toward a more digital and agile business model. Manulife Canada has named Sarah Miller Wright as its new head of Operations. Wright will be sitting on both the global operations and Canada leadership teams. In an emailed statement, Manulife said Wright’s responsibilities will include “continuing to reimagine how and when Manulife Canada interacts with customers across all its channels,” as well as “build foundational capabilities to drive effectiveness and improve the customer experience.” Wright’s professional career includes leadership roles in client services and customer care at companies including Virgin Mobile Canada and BCE Inc. Most recently, she was with Shaw Communications, where she moved through several senior leadership roles that culminated in her being SVP, Digital, Product & Service Delivery. At Shaw, she took charge of driving digital adoption to enhance the overall customer experience. She also spearheaded the company’s shift to more agile ways of working, building more effective systems and processes, and finding new ways to collaborate across teams. A passionate believer in developing strong talent to create a high-performing culture, Wright co-founded an employee resource group at Shaw to support women...

Staff | August 18, 2020 The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is leading a US$50-million series C funding round for Calgary-based 3D robotics supply chain company Attabotics Inc. The pension fund is making the investment through its Teachers’ Innovation Platform, along with existing investor Honeywell International Inc. According to a press release, Attabotics, which implements a combination of robotic shuttles and vertical storage to improve traditional supply chain logistics, intends to use the funding to accelerate its commercial deployment, invest in new technologies and further scale its operations. Read: Ontario Teachers’ investing in U.S. video games developer “We are excited by the opportunity to become a long-term investor because we believe in Attabotics’ differentiated technology and highly skilled team and how this combination is poised to disrupt existing cube storage solutions currently available in the market,” said Olivia Steedman, senior managing director of the TIP at the Ontario Teachers’, in the release. “We believe [Scott Gravelle, Attabotics founder, chief executive officer and chief technology officer] and his team have created a unique technology that can rapidly be deployed and which provides concrete benefits to retailers and their customers, including quicker delivery, reduced inventory, more efficient use of warehouse space and lower overall costs.” In personnel news, the Ontario Teachers’ chief...

Staff  | August 18, 2020 Navacord Corp. is acquiring Cooke Capital, a group benefits plan provider based in Prince Edward Island, effective Aug. 13, 2020. The partnership aims to combine the two companies’ insurance and benefits lines of business, supporting Navacord’s business strategy to provide more robust product offerings as it expands its benefits practice. Read: Navacord acquiring Ontario-based benefits firms “Cooke Capital complements Navacord’s business and is one of the few firms in Canada that has successfully cross-sold [property and casualty insurance] and benefits,” said Shawn DeSantis, president and chief executive officer at Navacord, in a press release. “In addition to expanding our reach to the Maritimes, [the firm] brings a lot of value to our benefits practice and we are pleased to welcome them to the Navacord family.” Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com

Kelsey Rolfe | August 18, 2020 Best Buy Canada Ltd. has had a well-used on-site gym at its Burnaby, B.C. head office for a decade. But when employees started working from home during the pandemic, the company decided to bring the gym to their laptops with a virtual fitness program. “We realized that staying fit and staying active was something we wanted to continue for people who were already part of our gym membership population and we wanted to offer it in a bigger way because of all the crazy stress that’s been added to people’s lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Carol Graziani, director of human resources services at Best Buy Canada. “We wanted to go beyond the basics of, ‘How do we get work done?’ to ‘How do we maintain some of our culture and take care of our people in the same way we were committed to doing in the physical world?’” Read: How to energize employees using virtual wellness The company partnered with Curtis Health, a corporate health and wellness service provider that managed its onsite gym, to offer virtual fitness classes to the company’s entire employee base. Employees have access to a regular rotation of classes through a virtual gym...

Giving brokerages even more insight into their digital performance Calgary, AB (Aug. 13, 2020) – Trufla Technology is excited to announce the official launch of truScore Pro, one of the most comprehensive reports for digital reach including analysis of marketing and sales aptitude. Measuring over 26 data points from SEO strength, to website optimization and social performance, truScore leaves no digital stone unturned. “We really wanted to develop a product that gives brokerages not just a partial picture of how their performing digitally, but a holistic view of how well their operations are set up to respond to and manage the entire buying cycle,” says Dave Duncan, Vice President Digital Strategy and Operations. “We have worked with hundreds of brokerages across Canada, and we realized that we cannot address just one part of the puzzle, it needs to be a 360 approach from awareness, to lead generation, to binding business. We noticed a lot of brokerages are great at getting prospects but are not converting this into results because their operations and sales strategy aren’t optimized to respond quickly and bind the business. truScore Pro is designed to help close this gap,” continues Duncan. Trufla has developed truScore Pro to...

Agents, brokers a ‘shining star’ in first half of 2020, reports Reagan Consulting Atlanta, GA (Aug. 13, 2020) – While the U.S. economy contracted in the second quarter of 2020 (Q2) at a rate not seen in 70 years, the insurance brokerage industry is a “shining star” with median organic growth of 4.4%, according to Reagan Consulting. This is the rate of growth for the six-month period that ended on June 30, compared with the same six-month period in 2019, as noted in Reagan Consulting’s quarterly Organic Growth and Profitability (OGP) survey. Although the result dropped from the strong Q1 rate of 6.6% and is the lowest organic growth rate recorded by the OGP Survey since Q3 2017, “it is an encouraging and perhaps surprising result given the COVID-related headwinds,” says Jim Campbell, Reagan Consulting partner. Several factors contributed to this result, he says: P-C Rate Increases Rate increases appear to have continued and, for some markets and coverages, accelerated through Q2. These increases helped offset potential losses from cancellations and/or exposure reductions and enabled median commercial P-C organic growth of 4.7%. Benefits Resilience For many firms, the anticipated hit to employee benefits revenue from COVID-related layoffs has not yet...

The top 10 ‘disruptor’ InsurTech companies announced by Lloyd’s Lab were selected from over 140 worldwide applications Cork, Ireland (Aug. 11, 2020) – Blink is pleased to announce that it has earned its place as 1 of just 10 InsurTechs selected following a competitive ‘virtual pitch’ process that had 140 of the world’s insurance industry trailblazers vying for a place on the prestigious Lloyd’s Lab innovation accelerator programme. Lloyd’s, the world’s leading specialist insurance and reinsurance market announced Blink’s selection to join its fifth cohort which will be focused on 3 themes including data & models, new insurance products & markets and response to COVID-19. The 10-week programme will commence on 7th September. The 10 successful companies can be viewed here. Speaking of today’s announcement, Blink’s co-founder and CEO Paul Prendergast said: “This has already been a tremendous experience for us and we’re just getting started. The pitch process allowed us to really refine our platform’s potential with an exciting range of commercial solutions and Lloyd’s Lab is going to work with us to accelerate the development and realization phases by providing us not only with Lloyd’s market access, but with rich historical data, analysis, modelling and testing forums. Our...

Research from Cambridge Mobile Telematics and IoT Insurance Observatory show drivers across all segments are ready for telematics Cambridge, MA (July 28, 2020) – Research shows that 63% of U.S. consumers are open to changing their current auto insurance policy for one with a telematics-based premium, according to a new report jointly published by Cambridge Mobile Telematics, the world’s leader in mobile telematics, and the IoT Insurance Observatory, a global connected insurance think tank. The research report, entitled Attractive UBI Business Models for US Consumers: The future of auto insurance will be telematics-based, mobile, and enriched with services, details the results of a recent wide-spread survey of U.S. drivers and their attitudes toward usage-based insurance (UBI). In order to have a comprehensive gauge of attitudes worldwide within the report, CMT and IoT Insurance Observatory launched three series of surveys, between June 2017 and January 2020, that collected responses from 2,500 respondents across all 50 U.S. states, as well as France, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. According to the report, many drivers are ready to work with insurers to price their insurance based on how they actually drive, instead of traditional insurance rating factors like zip code, age, gender,...