Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Fed chairman Jerome Powell led an emergency interest rate cut package last month. Prudential Financial Inc. will temporarily suspend taking applications for 30-year term life insurance policies, effective April 13, a spokeswoman confirmed today. The suspension, which will last until June, is in response to “unprecedented market volatility over the past month and the anticipated low interest rate environment for the foreseeable future,” Prudential said in a statement. Prudential is believed to be the first insurer to suspend term life insurance due to the pandemic-fueled volatility. Here is the company’s full statement: Prudential is focused on helping customers with their life insurance needs in this challenging time. The product changes announced last week are in response to the unprecedented market volatility over the past month and the anticipated low interest rate environment for the foreseeable future. Moving forward we will maintain a prudent financial approach, continuously evaluating our product portfolio and making adjustments that enable us to continue to deliver for our customers. Read the original article at insurancenewsnet.com

Montreal, QC (Mar. 31, 2020) – EQ Care, Canada’s pioneer in telemedicine, is pleased to announce that its virtual health platform will be integrated into a care management and navigation service provided by Hub International (Hub), one of the world’s largest insurance brokerages, to workforces across Canada. ‘Hub Care’ members will join the EQ Care Community and soon have 24/7 access to physicians, mental health specialists and other medical professionals in English or French. With more than 475 offices across North America, Hub’s extensive business network will help further the advancement of telemedicine and wellness programs to plan sponsors and their employees, especially in the midst of a pandemic. Patients can connect live to EQ Care Managers and medical professionals who have been trained to detect symptoms of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and will follow each patient through their care and treatment journey. “Hub International’s commitment to workplace wellness will pay dividends for both its vast network of clients and the Canadian public healthcare system,” said EQ Care CEO Daniel Martz. “Workplace virtual care deployed by experienced healthcare managers, providing access to a network of hundreds of doctors, specialists, mental health and paramedical professionals, can immediately relieve pressure on an overburdened public...

Boston, MA (Apr. 1, 2020) – Catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide projects that the number of mild to moderately symptomatic cases globally on April 15 from the COVID-19 outbreak could range between 2,000,000 and 7,000,000, and the number of severe cases could range between 1,000,000 and 3,000,000, with deaths ranging between 70,000 and 230,000. As of this morning’s WHO report, 205 countries, areas, and territories reported confirmed cases. The outbreak in the United States eclipsed both China and Italy, with 163,199 confirmed cases, according to the WHO, and 2,850 deaths after testing positive for the virus, while estimates from Johns Hopkins University and others place the numbers even higher. Italy has 101,739 reported cases and 11,591 deaths—although the rise in case numbers may be slowing after weeks of country-wide lockdown. Spain’s outbreak has surpassed China’s numbers, with 85,195 cases and 7,340 deaths. The first country affected severely by the outbreak had been China, which has reported 82,631 cases and 3,321 deaths; however, the number of new cases has reportedly declined to just a few per day due to early and aggressive containment measures, which are now easing. The next largest outbreak is in Germany with 61,913 cases and 583...

Kelsey Rolfe | April 6, 2020 An arbitrator has ruled in favour of the Winnipeg Police Association in its dispute with the City of Winnipeg over the police pension plan. The association filed the grievance in November 2019 after the city attempted to make alterations to the defined benefit pension plan. The changes included increasing employee contributions from eight per cent to 11.5 per cent and reducing employer contributions from 18.48 per cent to 11.5 per cent, both over a five-year time frame. Read: Unifor decries Co-op’s ‘final offer’ on pension, files unfair labour practices complaint “I conclude that the agreement requires that changes to the pension plan cannot be by unilateral action of the city and must be negotiated by the parties,” wrote arbitrator Michael Werier in his decision. The arbitrator has awarded the association $40,000 in damages and an additional $400 for each of its more than 1,300 members. Among its proposed changes, the City had also suggested excluding overtime hours from pensionable earnings and changing the plan’s early retirement provisions to include a pension reduction if members retired before age 55 — or age 60 if their service with the city was less than 20 years. It also wanted to eliminate the plan’s bridge benefit, which is...

Kelsey Rolfe | April 6, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic is expected to impact employers’ short-term disability claims’ experience as workers fall ill and require time off work to recover from the virus, but plan sponsors may also have to prepare for an increase in long-term disability claims after the crisis eventually ends. The spike in claims could follow the same pattern as it did in the wake of the 2008 recession, says Lianne Clarke, practice lead and vice-president of wellness and disability solutions at Cowan Insurance Group. “It’s [because] of the impact to the economy that we’re going to see a spike in STD after this, and that’s going to flow through to LTD.” Employees have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic — more than 2.13 million Canadians have already filed for employment insurance in the past two weeks. For companies that have implemented temporary layoffs, that will have knock-on effects for the employees who remain. Read: How to support employees’ mental health during coronavirus “You’ve got so many layoffs and reduced workforces happening right now that those people who are still in a job are happy to be in their job, but they’re taking on all that extra workload,” she says. “Historically, what we see...

Yaelle Gang, the Canadian Investment Review | April 6, 2020 Due to market volatility caused by the coronavirus, pension plans may be finding themselves offside their investment policies as their assets have drifted. Typically, pension funds have a strategic asset allocation policy, which specifies bands within each asset class that investments can move between, says Arun Muralidhar, an adjunct professor of finance at George Washington University and co-founder of M-cube Investment Technologies Inc. “And I think the moves have been so rapid in terms of the decline of risky assets like stocks that many of these funds have breached the lower end of the band.” This raises a question for pension plans sponsors: should they go back to the target weight or do something differently? Read: The impact of coronavirus on DB pension funding status, asset mix In the U.S., Muralidhar is seeing a number of plans suspend rebalancing. “I think what’s happening is a lot of these funds are scrambling in the middle of a crisis to figure out what to do, as opposed to having had plans in place already which said, ‘If we ever got to such a situation, what should we have done?’” However, implicit in the position to...

As the coronavirus crisis generates market volatility and threatens to change the face of life insurance as we know it, the job of the life insurance trustee to actively manage policies in the interest of the beneficiary. That was the thesis of a piece written by Judith L. Pearson of Denver, Colorado-based Nomadx Solutions and Michael Brohawn, CFP, in a piece published by WealthManagement.com. In reviewing the policies in their clients’ portfolios, the two said trustees should be reassured that insurance carriers are expected to retain their financial integrity. While higher mortality will affect insurers’ profitability, current projections suggest they’ll remain stable “as long as the population follows suggested and required guidelines.” In-force policies are also expected to suffer a performance impact for the foreseeable future, particularly as the novel coronavirus’s economic effects weigh on investment assets, primarily consisting of fixed investments. “All permanent life insurance policies under a trustee’s care should be stress-tested by a life insurance professional,” Pearson and Brohawn said. Past performance projections, which now are likely to be optimistic, must be compared with new re-projections using current as well as lower assumptions. While fixed products’ returns will likely trend lower for the foreseeable future thanks to...

Disability insurance attorneys Dell & Schaefer discuss the pre-disability occupation duties of the claimant and their impact when seeking LTD benefits. GREG DELL: Hi, I’m Greg Dell here with attorney Stephen Jessup. And we handle thousands of long-term disability applications for disability claimants across the country. And in this video, I want to concentrate on…

Staff | April 3, 2020 While many Canadian employers are increasing safety measures for their frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic, a minority are increasing pay or considering doing so, according to a new survey by the Conference Board of Canada. The majority (86 per cent) of respondents said they have employees who need to attend work in person. All respondents said they’re ensuring the cleanliness of work surfaces, 95 per cent said they’re providing sanitary gels and hand-washing facilities and 94 per cent are enforcing social distancing protocols on employees. Read: Some large retailers maintaining pay, benefits for store staff amid temporary closures More than half (58 per cent) of survey respondents said they’ve provided employees with personal protective equipment, 37 per cent are assessing employees’ health upon arrival and 33 per cent are installing physical barriers to protect their employees. However, just 21 per cent of employers with non-unionized workforces and 15 per cent of employers with unionized staff have elected to offer pay premiums to their public-facing workers, who are more at risk of contracting the virus. Eight per cent of employers with non-unionized staff and nine per cent of employers with unionized workers are considering offering pay increases to those workers. Among organizations that are offering...

Toronto, ON (Apr. 3, 2020) – The Superintendent of Insurance of the Northwest Territories has approved the use of Electronic Proof of Auto Insurance, or eSlips, in the territory. This approval allows drivers in the territory to digitally store and present their eSlips when required, without having to carry the paper copy. This change is effective immediately. Northwest Territories joins Nova Scotia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador in allowing consumers the option of using eSlips. CSIO launched My Proof of Insurance in February 2018 in order to offer the industry a modern method of delivering digital proof of auto insurance and policy documents. The solution allows insurance providers across Canada to send attachments and eSlips to personal and commercial customers through secure email, using a consistent look and feel, regardless of sender. Digital Privacy and Accessibility My Proof of Insurance allows drivers to store, display and share their eSlips in their mobile wallet on their phones, while also protecting their personal data by leveraging bank-grade security and the native lock screen function on smartphones. Drivers can easily access the eSlip from their mobile wallet without the need for an Internet connection, downloading an app or storing separate passwords....