Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

The pilot, implemented on July 1, 2019, provides about 500 hydro fleet employees and their dependants with online access to a doctor 24 hours a day, seven days a week, says Tanya Hickey, the organization’s senior manager of health and safety strategies. On average, the response rate to contact a physician is two minutes and consultations last around 15 minutes. Through the platform, provided by virtual health-care company Maple, employees can also receive lab requisitions, specialist referrals and medical documentation for disability management. Read: OPG wins absence management award for efforts to shift workplace culture The pilot was introduced after OPG’s eastern operations team reported its sick leave rates were higher than rates across the rest of OPG and asked about best practices for addressing the problem, says Hickey. Many of these employees had been transferred from the Lambton-Port Dover area in Ontario, and one of their major complaints was they no longer had access to family physicians. Further, these towns lack walk-in clinics, so employees were stuck in the hospital’s emergency room for six to eight hours, losing a day of work just to see a doctor. “If you don’t have a family physician, you can go to the emergency...

Goshen News (IN) May 14–Though the COVID-19 pandemic carries on, claiming thousands of lives, infecting thousands more and altering social and economic landscapes, the number of people planning ahead with health care instructions doesn’t seem to have changed. Local attorneys, whose practices include estate planning and wills, said they hadn’t really seen big increases in demand for creating advance directives for health care. They spoke anecdotally about a month into Indiana’s stay-at-home order and travel restrictions. The attorneys and doctors recommend having such documents in place, at any age, in case of a situation or emergency where a patient can’t articulate medical treatment choices for themselves. The directives can also state who a patient wants making health care decisions for them. “Usually in the medical situations, it’s important to have an advocate — somebody who’s willing to be proactive, contacting doctors and nurses and whoever they can, and to find out what the situation is and what the options are,” said attorney Loraine Troyer. “It’s like anything else, there’s just options on what to do. And that’s what a health care directive does: it appoints somebody to help choose those options.” Troyer provides wills, estate planning and bankruptcy services from...

A grey picture of the life-insurance industry is developing south of the border as some U.S. carriers start to introduce restrictions to their offerings in the face of challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Wall Street Journal, numerous Americans looking for life insurance coverage amid the outbreak are being turned away as certain insurers suspend sales of popular products, hike premiums, or scale back coverage and benefits. Numerous firms, including Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., have temporarily stopped selling life insurance to people 70 and older with poor health. Insurance-industry leaders have cited analyses showing older people with underlying medical problems have much higher mortality rates from the novel coronavirus compared to younger ones. Citing a memo Penn Mutual issued to brokers in March, the Journal said the insurer expects “to revisit these and other changes as we gain better insight into the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.” Prudential, the largest life insurer in the U.S. by assets, has suspended sales of 30-year term-life policies, and reduced the interest it credits to certain universal life policies that combine savings and death benefits. A raft of insurers – including AIG, Nationwide Mutual Insurance, Pacific Life Insurance, and Principal Financial...

Staff | May 14, 2020 Aon has introduced an interactive online tool that forecasts the impact of the coronavirus on employee populations across Canada, aiming to help employers anticipate the effect on their benefits plan costs, absenteeism and potential requirements for shifting work operations. “COVID-19 has brought on uncertainties in many aspects of our lives and this application will help employers understand their risks,” said Greg Durant, Canadian chief actuary of health solutions at Aon, in a press release. Read: Employers taking many approaches to leave, benefits during coronavirus pandemic “Aon consultants will work with employers to build plans on how to keep employees safe while minimizing disruptions to their operations,” he added. “In these uncertain times, it is important that organizations have the most current information from which to base their decisions to safely maintain vital operations.” The tool combines employer-specific data with geographic infection rates from reputable epidemiologic models. It’s updated daily based on the spread of the virus, social distancing measures taken by local governments and the current figures of confirmed patients, hospitalizations, deaths and testing and treatment patterns. It also allows employers to estimate the impact on dental care, health care and absenteeism costs associated with the pandemic. Read: Should plan...

The Canadian Press | May 14, 2020 The federal New Democrats say all Canadians require access to two weeks of sick leave benefits as provinces start moving to reopen their economies while fighting the coronavirus and the federal government should pay for it. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Wednesday that workers without sick leave who are put back on the job during the pandemic will be left to decide between protecting others from infection and paying their bills. “We need paid sick leave, there is no question about it. It should no longer be an option.”  Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, has been reminding people almost daily to stay home when they’re sick, even with mild symptoms, or else risk further transmission of the coronavirus. Read: Employers taking many approaches to leave, benefits during coronavirus pandemic The government should be paying people to do just that, said Singh, suggesting the cost could be covered by the Canada Emergency Response Benefit or the employment insurance system. The NDP pitched the idea to the Liberals but they declined to include it in a bill presented to the House of Commons on Wednesday in the weekly opportunity to pass legislation. Singh tried to put the idea forward...

AI-powered content migration and optimization software enables the modernization of customer communications management systems Toronto, ON (May 14, 2020) – Messagepoint Inc. is pleased to announce the launch of Rationalizer, an AI-powered software solution that accelerates the migration of legacy customer communications and content to modern environments, while also enabling the optimization of that content. Since 2016, Messagepoint has offered Rationalizer as a service through its professional services team, but due to market demand, Messagepoint has evolved the solution to enable end users and other service providers to license and independently leverage the technology. Messagepoint’s new version of Rationalizer further enables automated, intelligent ingestion with support of Word and HTML documents, in addition to PDF and XML formats, and also provides enhanced AI/ML metadata tagging. Additionally, Rationalizer further streamlines the process of consolidating similar and duplicate content, enabling it to happen with a single click. The modernization of legacy content and customer communications management (CCM) systems is a key goal of many organizations that manage complex, regulated communications, such as those in the financial services, insurance and healthcare industries. To date, organizations are forced to resort to manual processes to migrate content to new, modern CCM systems. It’s not uncommon...

New partners will help Visa protect millions of additional digital payments from fraudsters and reduce friction for merchants and consumers San Francicso, CA (May 13, 2020) – Visa Inc. is pleased to announce that 28 new partners will be joining Visa Token Service as credential-on-file (COF) token requestors. These new partners will help make digital transactions more secure by tokenizing both one-time and recurring payments made with Visa credentials. Tokenization replaces a cardholder’s 16-digit Visa account number with a token that only Visa can unlock, protecting the underlying card number from fraudsters. New partners joining Visa Token Service include acquirer gateway and technology partners Assist, Aurus, BlueSnap, Braspag, Bambora, DPO PayGate, eComCharge, Fat Zebra, eGHL, Infinitium, iPay88, Iveri, LiqPay/PrivatBank, Mail.ru, Moneris, One Inc., Omise, Payture, Payvision, Portmone, RBK.Money, Spreedly, Tickets Travel Network EESTI, Tranzzo, WalletDoc, WayForPay, Windcave, and Yandex.Money. Once certified, these 28 partners will be able to tokenize credential-on-file digital payments on behalf of their merchant and payment clients for an additional level of security. In addition to enhancing security, tokenization also helps reduce friction in the payment process, because customers do not have to manually update stored card information if their Visa card is lost, stolen or expires....

Leading cyber insurance provider takes aim at the new threats technology brings to Canadian businesses San Francicso, CA (May 14, 2020) – Coalition, the leading cyber insurance and security company in the US, is pleased to announce it is expanding its offering to Canada-based companies, providing proactive cybersecurity products and services and best-in-class cyber and technology error & omissions insurance to help keep businesses safe. Coalition will offer up to CAD $20 million of comprehensive insurance coverage supported by the financial strength of Swiss Re (A.M. Best A+) to companies with up to CAD $1 billion in annual revenue. Through Coalition’s online platform, licensed insurance brokers are able to generate a quote in minutes and also provide their clients with access to Coalition’s proprietary cybersecurity tools and services that are designed to detect, mitigate, and contain threats at no additional cost. Cyber threats know no boundaries — technology has introduced a range of new threats to businesses irrespective of their location that are not well covered by traditional insurers. Coalition’s global cybersecurity platform provides businesses the risk management support they need most, including help preventing incidents in the first place, and support during and after a crisis. With this expansion,...

Toronto, ON (May 13, 2020) – CSIO is pleased to announce the release of three new eLearning courses to its Digital Broker eLearning program. Brokers can now earn up to six hours of Continuing Education (CE) credits through CSIO’s free, accredited, online courses. The eLearning program offers on-demand courses in addition to webinars that are scheduled regularly throughout the year. The new courses are: Digital Disruption and The Technology Fallacy – A guide for business leaders on building a digital culture. Led by Gerald Kane, visiting professor at Harvard School of Business and author of a best-selling book on digital disruption. Insurance Technology Essentials – A look at how the standards efficiently move insurance data, including advancements in commercial lines and emerging technology. My Proof of Insurance: Delivering a Digital Customer Experience – Illustrates how electronic proof of auto insurance provides customers with the digital experience they expect. Launched in late 2019, the CSIO Digital Broker eLearning program is designed to increase brokers’ digital operational competencies, promote digital best practices, and equip brokers with knowledge-based materials and tools that improve their awareness of technology in insurance. With each course taught by an industry expert, brokers can expect to learn practices they can implement right...

Kelsey Rolfe  | May 14, 2020 Canadian pension rules and regulations are in need of reform in order to properly address the reality of the 21st century workplace pension landscape, according to a new report by the C.D. Howe Institute. The report, authored by Bob Baldwin, a pension industry veteran and chair of the C.D. Howe’s pension policy council, argued that the age-old debate between the merits of defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans obscures the myriad plan design changes that have taken place on both sides over the years and the risks that plan members face in all cases. “The diversity in the design of the plans, combined with current financial and economic circumstances, has varied results for all types of pension and retirement savings plans, making it difficult to generalize the merits of each plan,” said Baldwin in a press release. Read: Bob Baldwin appointed chair of C.D. Howe pension policy council The most important priority, according to the report, is to assess plan members’ retirement income needs and the risks they face and “make sure they are addressed in a way that is fair among plan members and is reasonable in terms of the level and volatility of required contributions.” The exclusive focus...