Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Apri, as one of the larger independent group benefits consulting firms in Canada, further expands People Corporation’s presence in the Greater Toronto Area, Vancouver and Calgary Acquisition establishes People Corporation as a leading national group benefit Managing General Agent (“MGA”) in Canada, further expanding its distribution reach Winnipeg, MB (Nov. 29, 2019) – People Corporation is pleased to announce that it has closed the acquisition of the Apri Group of Companies. Apri is among the largest independent group benefits consulting firms and group benefits MGAs in Canada, generating approximately $17 million in revenue annually. With approximately 110 employees and offices in Richmond Hill, Mississauga, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, Apri serves over 600 businesses nationally, while its MGA, under the brand GroupQuest, currently serves approximately 600 group benefits advisors across Canada. In addition, Apri has developed the JungoHR platform, offering a human resources information system (“HRIS”) focused on mid-sized and enterprise-level businesses, complementing People Corporation’s recent acquisition of Collage Technologies Inc. “In our ongoing journey to build People Corporation into Canada’s premier independent provider of group benefits consulting and third-party administration services, group retirement services and human resource consulting, there are very few opportunities to partner with an organization like Apri,...

Toronto, ON (Dec. 2, 2019) – On November 28, the Insurance Bureau of Canada held its first Commercial Insurance Symposium, where industry leaders shared insights and perspectives on the commercial insurance market. The symposium examined the commercial insurance environment and discussed such questions as: Where are we now? How did we get here? And where are we going? Topics included: The state of the industry: What’s driving the commercial insurance market? Public liability: Risks facing our towns and cities Managing wildfire risk Redefining catastrophes from a reinsurer’s perspective The emerging issues facing the commercial market The future of risk Read the opening remarks by Don Forgeron, President & CEO, IBC: Remarks by Don Forgeron at IBC’s Commercial Insurance Symposium Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us here today for IBC’s first symposium on commercial insurance. It’s long overdue. We hope you find that it was worth the wait. We’ve got a full agenda and a number of terrific panels lined up for us today. I want to begin by thanking Linda Regner-Dykeman, Chair of the Commercial Lines Committee, and David Yeatman, the Deputy Chair – along with everyone on the committee – for their hard work in...

Amid regulatory changes and InsurTech competition, Canadian insurers find that a one-size-fits all approach in the millennial era won’t work anymore: KPMG report Toronto, ON (Nov. 29, 2019) – With digital-savvy millennials now the world’s largest population segment and Gen Z following in their footsteps, Canadian insurance companies must rethink their business and harness big data to drive growth and profitability, finds a new KPMG report titled Insurance frontiers: Here to horizon. “The insurance industry will look radically different in 10 years from how it does today,” says KPMG’s Chris Cornell, Partner and National Insurance Sector Leader. “Forging a new path won’t be easy; insurers must digitize their operations, products, and processes, and use data-driven insights to address this seismic shift in customer dynamics. The one-size-fits-all approach won’t work anymore.” As many as 86 per cent of chief executives at insurance companies around the world surveyed by KPMG are concerned over how millennials will change their business. Millennials aren’t following historical norms in terms of predicted life paths or milestones. Also, 84 per cent of Canadian millennials don’t trust traditional advertising and 95 per cent say the most credible source of product information is their friends. Data allows insurance companies...

Over-reliance on technology and lack of education cited as main factors Toronto, ON (Nov. 27, 2019) – Your vehicle brakes automatically to avoid a collision. It beeps to warn you if there is a car in your blind spot. The steering wheel vibrates if you unintentionally drift out of your lane or start crossing lanes without signalling. A light flashes to warn you of a risk of frontal collision. These features are all designed to make driving safer, but nearly half of Canadian drivers also think they pose a risk to road safety, according to a recent survey released by Desjardins Insurance. Increasingly, vehicles on our roads are equipped with highly sophisticated safety features to prevent crashes or warn drivers of unsafe conditions. While a majority of drivers agree that these safety features are needed to make our roads safer (51%), the survey data suggests more needs to be done to ensure drivers not only understand what these features are meant to do, but also what they don’t guard against. “While studies clearly show that crash avoidance and other safety systems in newer cars are reducing collisions and saving lives, the survey’s findings are enough to give us pause. They...

myNav assesses, designs and simulates cloud solutions to accelerate business transformation New York, NY (Nov. 26, 2019) – Accenture is pleased to announce the launch of myNav, a cloud platform that helps organizations design and simulate different cloud solutions to identify the ones that best fit their specific business requirements. Identifying the right cloud solution can be complicated, as there are multiple cloud providers and cloud models, including public, private, multi and hybrid. Further, many companies spend significant time and money migrating applications and data centers to the cloud only to find that the applications don’t always operate optimally. Accenture research shows that nearly two-thirds of companies are not seeing the expected benefits from their cloud migration initiatives. myNav evaluates multiple variables — including an organization’s technology infrastructure, applications, data, operational model and business outcomes — to identify the right solution for enterprises, then simulates it at scale to confirm its viability and refine the business case. By providing a customized roadmap, myNav enables organizations to maximize the return on their current and future cloud technology investments. For example, myNav recommends the application transformation approach for clients to accelerate their innovation in the cloud. “We built myNav based on our...

All charts courtesy of Wink, Inc. Low rates and regulation combined to keep life insurance sales down in the third quarter, one leading analyst says. The new data was compiled by Wink, Inc. in its 89th edition of Wink’s Sales & Market Report. Non-variable universal life sales for the third quarter were over $816.1 million, down 5.2% when compared to the previous quarter and down 6.7% as compared to the same period last year. Non-variable universal life sales include both indexed UL and fixed UL product sales. Noteworthy highlights for total non-variable universal life sales in the third quarter included Pacific Life Companies retaining the No. 1 ranking overall for non-variable universal life sales, with a market share of 10.7%. Pacific Life Pacific Discovery Xelerator IUL 2 was the No. 1 selling product for non-variable universal life sales, for all channels combined. All charts courtesy of Wink, Inc. Indexed life sales for the third quarter were $529.1 million, down 4.2% when compared with the prior quarter, and down more than 0.1% as compared to the same period last year. Indexed life sales include both indexed UL and indexed whole life. “While third quarter is typically a crummy quarter for life...

Martha Porado | November 29, 2019 The combination between preventative medicine and pharmacists can be a powerful one. Through a collaboration between the University of British Columbia’s pharmacists clinic and its human resources’ health, well-being and benefits division, researchers sought to improve the cardiovascular health of staff members, including those who didn’t realize they might be at risk. “In British Columbia, part of a pharmacist’s scope of practice is preventing illness and preventing disease,” says Barbara Gobis, director of the pharmacists clinic at the university. Gobis and her collaborators specifically focused on prevention, aiming to measure the risks that have yet to surface. “We found unmanaged risk out there and that’s what you want to be dealing with — people before they’re so sick that it’s really hard to get them back to a good place.” Read: What role can pharmacists play in health-care access, improved outcomes? The research then sought to measure the effects of intervening, with the goal of improving the health of the 178 participants. “The intervention itself was, we would meet with a person, we would do a number of health measurements — height, weight, body mass index, blood pressure, lipid panel [and] lifestyle risk factors — and we would calculate a Framingham risk score, which...

Staff | November 29, 2019 Institutional investors have been rushing into the arms of alternative, less liquid, investments over the past two decades. But how major players approach these investments varies considerably, according to a paper by Kristy Jansen a PhD student at Tilburg University, and Patrick Tuijp, a research affiliate at the University of Amsterdam. In examining a survey of nine Dutch and five Canadian pension funds and fiduciary managers, the paper found survey participants from both countries indicated the risk-return trade-off as the main reason for investing in illiquid assets, followed by diversification. Canadian respondents were more likely to report that steady cash flow and liability hedging were the main reasons for these investments. Read: A look at the TTC pension plan’s move to more illiquid assets On the other hand, Dutch respondents were more likely to say asset-liability modelling studies determined how much they allocate to illiquid asset classes. And Canadian respondents were more likely to say they deviate from target allocations depending on a specified target return for illiquid assets. Many of the funds surveyed indicated they have explicit or implicit liquidity management policies, which include maintaining a cash buffer, using the repo market or securities lending. According to respondents, the option they least prefer is selling...

Alethea Spirdon | November 28, 2019 Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of working women believe gender discrimination is the main cause for the lack of female executives, compared to 41 per cent of working men, according to a new study by Randstad Canada. The study, which surveyed 2,000 female and male workers to understand why more women aren’t in leadership roles in Canada, found women make up just 19.5 per cent of board members for Canada’s top 500 companies, while only 8.5 per cent of the highest paid positions in Canada’s top listed companies are held by women. It also found a majority (71 per cent) of working Canadians believe balanced representation of both genders on a leadership team have a positive impact on a business’ financial success. Read: What is the key to boosting gender equality at work? “If we look at gender discrimination, 41 per cent of men feel it plays a role, but that is up considerably to 62 per cent of women feeling that way,” says Carolyn Levy, president of Randstad Technologies and the company’s diversity and inclusion ambassador. “So to that demographic, why aren’t there more women there? Well, there’s a large majority of them feeling there’s a discrimination piece that sits there.” Fifty per cent of female respondents said prioritizing family...

Staff | November 28, 2019 Shoppers Drug Mart is partnering with SilverCloud Health Ltd. to make the digital mental-health solutions company’s online cognitive behavioural therapy program available to Canadian plan sponsors. SilverCloud’s digital CBT offering includes behavioural-health coaching support for depression and anxiety from trained social workers, as well as self-help programs on stress management and resiliency. “As the exclusive Canadian partner of SilverCloud Health, we are excited to bring their digital cognitive behavioural platform to employers,” said Mark Rolnick, Shoppers’ vice-president of payor partnerships and plan sponsor innovation, in a press release. “Canadian employers will be able to supplement their coverage of drug therapy, which is often an important part of treatment and recovery, with an innovative, cost-effective psychotherapy offering.” Read: How does cognitive behavioural therapy actually work? Shoppers will also add SilverCloud’s platform to its own employee benefits plan. “As an organization with a large network of retail pharmacies across the country, we are very much aware of the impact that poor mental health can have on employees, as well as their co-workers and the customers they serve,” said Zebrina Kassam, senior vice-president of human resources at Shoppers. Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com