Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

In-market testing of CCC® Quick View delivers strong improvements to underwriting process, policyholder experience Chicago, IL (June 15, 2019) – CCC Information Services Inc. is pleased to announce the availability of CCC® Quick View, a photo-guided vehicle inspection solution. Quick View enables auto underwriters to efficiently and affordably complete vehicle inspections virtually by offering policyholders a mobile app to easily capture vehicle photos. Once photos are received, CCC’s proven AI-enabled photo analytics and Damage Detection Heatmaps® are applied, allowing insurers to assess vehicle condition, including the identification of pre-existing damage. Quick View also makes it easy for insurers to assess the presence of custom equipment. Policyholders can capture and share photos at their convenience typically in five minutes. Early use of Quick View by a large, national insurer shows marked improvements in cost, speed, and the identification of pre-existing damage. Specifically, Quick View reduced costs by 75 percent over manual inspections, led to 60 percent of inspections being completed in less than 24 hours, and identified pre-existing damage on more than 15 percent of assessed vehicles. “Insurers are looking to balance the need to understand risk with the ability to efficiently and consistently conduct vehicle inspections,” said Naved Siddique, group...

From battery performance to cyber and fire: Electric cars bring myriad new risks and claims scenarios for manufacturers, suppliers and insurers Government policies on climate change and consumer demand could see the number of electric cars reach 100 million by start of next decade compared with seven million today. New risk challenges to manage for automotive industry and their insurers: potential defect and performance issues; more complex and costly repairs; new fire and cyber threats; and even sustainable sourcing and disposal of critical components and raw materials. Increasing complexity of supply chains and use of new technology will have a strong impact on product liability insurance in the commercial insurance segment. New York, NY (June 9, 2020) – Around the globe, the take-up of electric cars is expected to accelerate rapidly in future, driven by consumer demand and government policies aimed at tackling climate change. The future of mobility is clearly electric, but the transition will lead to a fundamental change in risk for manufacturers, suppliers and insurers alike and will have a significant impact on automotive product liability insurance, according to a new report from insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS). “From supply chain networks to production processes...

To be a market leader in the future, insurers need to transition their thinking from being an auto insurer to being a mobility provider, for which auto insurance may be just one component, according to Majesco’s new research report Morristown, NJ (June 4, 2020) – Majesco, a global leader of cloud insurance software solutions for insurance business transformation, is pleased to announce the release of their 5th annual primary consumer research study, Rethinking Auto: From Auto Insurance Transaction to Mobility Customer Experience, which takes a deeper dive into the market shifts and generational buying differences for automobiles, highlighting a shift from auto as a policy transaction to a mobility experience. The report provides a detailed analysis into the generational differences in the types of transportation options used and the expectations for a broader mobility experience that includes a risk product, access to other transportation options, and other value-added services. “With so much change occurring in the automotive space, companies from outside the insurance industry are coalescing around a shift to mobility, which will have far reaching implications for auto insurance providers,” stated Denise Garth, SVP of Strategic Marketing, Industry Relations and Innovation at Majesco. “Mobility options are important to customers...

Business Wire As Americans evaluate their finances during these challenging times, many financial professionals may be missing opportunities to shift conversations about retirement from accumulation to protection. The new 2020 Retirement Risk Readiness Study from Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life) surveyed three categories of Americans to get different perspectives on retirement: pre-retirees (those 10 years or more from retirement); near-retirees (those within 10 years of retirement); and those who are already retired. The findings reveal gaps in conversations with financial professionals that can help clients protect their retirement assets from some of the risks that can derail savings strategies. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200622005390/en/ New study from Allianz Life finds 60% of non-retirees say running out of money before they die is one of their biggest worries, yet only 27% who work with a financial professional have discussed longevity risk with them. (Graphic: Business Wire) Although people who have already retired are fairly confident about how long their money will last, six in 10 non-retirees said running out of money before they die is one of their biggest concerns. But unfortunately, only about a quarter (27%) of non-retirees who work...

Guidewire recognizes Solution partners’ achievements and continues to expand the breadth of integrations available in the Marketplace, benefiting its global community of P&C insurers San Mateo, CA (June 17, 2020) – Guidewire Software, Inc., provider of the industry platform Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers rely upon, is pleased to announce that six Solution partners have been promoted within the PartnerConnect Solution Alliance Program for their contributions serving mutual customers. PartnerConnect includes four relationship tiers (or levels); Access, Select, Advantage, and Premier. The PartnerConnect tiers are designed to recognize individual partners based on their achievements, and promotions are awarded as partners gain more market traction when their integrated solutions are adopted by Guidewire customers. Joining current Premier tier partners Hyland, OpenText and Smart Communications are: Enterprise Holdings drives process efficiencies with ClaimCenter integrations for ARMS® and Entegral Smart Locator customers. Quadient provides InsuranceSuite integrations for Quadient Inspire, a centralized platform for design, management, and delivery of personalized, compliant omnichannel customer communications. Partners promoted to the Advantage tier include: CoreLogic, whose integrations allow our joint customers to gain insights to make better, faster decisions through access to robust commercial and residential property data. FRISS recently released the client validated FRISS add-on for...

By Greg Boutin, CEO, Relay Platform — We are sometimes asked why the world needs a new platform for Risk Transfer. There are already so many! The Quick Answer Let us start by saying that Relay isn’t just a placement platform. Relay is a SaaS platform that helps insurance and reinsurance participants with structuring and transferring risk faster, digitizing and augmenting their dealmaking network, and taking out the pain of managing all associated communications, reminders, reporting and integrations. In a nutshell, Relay helps with the upstream data gathering, structuring and administration of risk placements. Everything that happens before any actual transaction is conducted. That is critical. Few platforms tackle those steps, which remain mostly manual, and this is why Relay is in fact fully compatible with most other placement platforms. We certainly handle the transactions themselves, and we handle them very well. But if all you need is a system to centralize risk transfer information, and then push it to third parties like brokers or a reinsurer, by email, MS Excel, XML, API or other formats, then you will find Relay to be a top choice, still. We have found in our many discussions with brokers, underwriters and ceding teams,...

Martha Porado | June 22, 2020 For many employers, the newly digital office environment necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic can be awkward, especially for recent graduates entering career-track jobs for the firm time. “Personally, I’m saddened by the situation for a number of reasons, but certainly for those students that are graduating and looking for summer internships, . . . hiring practices aren’t the same,” says Mary Ann Yule, president and chief executive officer of HP Canada. “How do you onboard individuals so they actually feel your company culture, part of the team and that they can cultivate these relationships? “Ordinarily, when you onboard someone into your company, you introduce them to people, you take them through seminars and all these different things that companies do to make sure they’re welcomes and that they find their place.” Read: Five workplace changes that should stay post-coronavirus However, it’s not a given that managers will use video technology and employers need to ensure managers are leveraging those tools effectively, she says, including ensuring new hires have the proper tools they need to function at home. “We have to take advantage of video technology, which is great because a lot of the grads probably get that...

Annuity sales in the U.S. are set to struggle in 2020, with a rebound not in the cards until at least next year. According to forecasts from the Secure Retirement Institute (SRI), total annuity sales in the U.S. will drop between 8% and 15% this year. It cited the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered ultra-low interest rates, extreme market volatility, and record-high unemployment – conditions that generally make for weak annuity sales. However, SRI sees a brighter outlook for 2021 and 2022. Aside from a slow rise in equity markets and interest rates, it expects an expansion in the number of people aged 65 and older to enable an annuity market rebound that will make up for losses in 2020. One corner of the annuity space is also expected to thrive this year. According to Todd Giesing, senior research director, SRI Annuity Research, registered index-linked annuities (RILAs) are uniquely positioned to thrive under current conditions as they “offer investment growth opportunity with limited downside risk.” The lone annuity product poised for growth in 2020, RILAs are expected to reach nearly US$20 billion as consumers seek a balance of protection, safety, and growth potential. A sub-segment of variable annuities...

Staff  | June 19, 2020 As part of a new collective agreement ratified earlier this year, employees at Hamilton, Ont.-based Vopak Terminals have joined the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan’s DBPlus arrangement, effective June 1, 2020. With the change, these employees, who are members of Unifor, move from a defined contribution plan into a defined benefit plan. Since DBPlus was launched in 2018, more than 33 employers and more than 15,000 members have joined the plan. Read: Four more employers join CAAT’s DBplus pension plan “Getting a good pension was a major priority for our members in this round of bargaining and CAAT met both our need to ensure a stable retirement income for our members while recognizing the needs of our employer,” said Phil Barbara, president of Unifor Local 2003E, in a press release. Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com

Staff | June 19, 2020 The majority (95 per cent) of global employers said they include emotional and mental-health programs in their corporate well-being platforms, according to a new survey by Business Health Group and Fidelity Investments Inc. The survey, which was fielded last fall and prior to the coronavirus pandemic, found the most common mental-health and well-being offerings were teletherapy, which 69 per cent of employers said they’ll offer this year, followed by stress management (50 per cent), resiliency programs (49 per cent) and programs to help improve sleep (33 per cent).  Employers also said they’re increasing their emphasis on helping employees improve their work-life balance, with 78 per cent of respondents reporting they include these types of benefits in their well-being platforms. Popular work-life balance benefits included caregiver support (46 per cent), programs and tools for new parents (36 per cent) and childcare support (35 per cent). Read: Majority of Canadian employees rank work-life balance as good, excellent: survey “Employers are facing a completely different set of well-being challenges this year as they and their employees try to adapt to changes to their physical work environment or their job status,” said Shams Talib, head of Fidelity’s workplace consulting division, in a press release. “The...