Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

‘Machine Learning Superpowers’: Announcing Atlas and Orbit – products for teams that want to rapidly scale their ML efforts Dessa has distilled its experience engineering ML for the world’s largest companies into powerful ML products focused on development and production: Try Atlas for free Toronto, ON (Oct. 21, 2019) – Dessa, a company with world-renowned excellence in machine learning, has announced the launch of its products Atlas and Orbit, which together make up Foundations, an end-to-end platform for the development and production of ML at scale. The vision for both products is simple: with powerful tools developing real-world ML and maintaining it after production, we want Atlas and Orbit to give engineers around the world the ability to build impactful applications with ML faster than ever before. The launch of Atlas and Orbit marks the company’s biggest product launch to date, coming after Dessa engineers shared their AI recreation of Joe Rogan’s voice, developed using Atlas. Product Details: Atlas: Tools for rapidly developing ML at scale. Enables ML engineers to manage 1000s of experiments concurrently, save 8x on compute costs and deploy models with a single click Orbit: Tools for managing ML models in production. Enables ML engineers to overcome...

Toronto, ON (Oct. 21, 2019) – SAS, the leader in analytics has been selected by Northbridge Financial Corporation (Northbridge), a Fairfax company, to support their journey toward IFRS 17 compliance. The new International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS 17) is expected to increase the complexity and cost of operating in the industry and will increase the required level of detailed financial information. Together, SAS and Northbridge will work to efficiently address IFRS 17 requirements and deliver additional benefits beyond compliance tied to improved data management in support of Northbridge’s business operations and financial management. “This collaboration with SAS allows us to leverage our existing relationship to ensure the successful implementation of IFRS 17. The expertise of our internal resources combined with the know-how of SAS will allow our company to comply with the standard within the set deadline while optimizing the functionalities of this new solution,” said Craig Pinnock, Chief Financial Officer, Northbridge. IFRS 17 will fundamentally change the face of accounting. Insurance companies will have to report in greater depth on how insurance contracts affect their financial position. The regulation demands greater detail in financial analysis and increased cooperation between actuarial and accounting departments. While the standard does not come...

Ottawa, ON (Oct. 21, 2019) – ENCON Group Inc., a leading managing general agent in Canada, and a Victor company, today rebrands as Victor Canada. The announcement follows the larger global unification and rebrand of The Schinnerer Group to Victor Insurance Holdings announced in 2018. Victor Canada works with independent brokers and advisors and a large pool of A-rated carriers to offer a unique range of products and programs across Canada in professional liability, property, casualty, and group and retiree benefits. Formed more than 50 years ago, it has locations in Ottawa, Mississauga, and Edmonton, and more than 250 employees. “By combining our business under a single brand and leveraging our data, technology and capital capabilities across Victor, we will be even better positioned to offer innovative solutions to agents, brokers, insureds, and carriers,” said David Cook, President of Victor Canada. The MGA recently launched V² (“V Squared”) and V+ (“V Plus”), two advanced technology platforms designed to streamline the insurance-buying process for brokers and individual clients. “This is an exciting time for our businesses in North America, and marks an important step in Victor’s future growth as a global MGA/MGU,” said Brian Hanuschak, President of Victor North America. “Operating...

We have been seeing increased interest in and utilization of “InsurTech” – a large set of development programs and implementation methods to increase quality and quantity, streamline processes, enhance value, or otherwise improve on the business of insurance. All told, InsurTech is driving new methods to improve insurers’ and brokers’ technologies and to utilize new, technology-driven methods to make insurance more efficient and more cost-efficient. However, there is a question emerging: will InsurTech continue to be a major driver for new programs? It’s a big project …   This summer, Alicja Gradkowska discussed how “InsurTech growth in Canada opens up opportunities for insurers and brokers” for Insurance Business Canada. Among the InsurTech tools are ‘hackathons,’ which focus on bringing together a wide mixture of employees, programmers, managers, experts and support groups to test new approaches, innovate techniques, and define new data sets and tools over a short period to generate results and guidance that can ultimately be applied to operations. The hackathon in this case – titled ‘Hack It’ – was organized by Ontario Innovation Centre and featured Jones & Associates Insurance and Gore Mutual. Sachin Rustagi, Gore Mutual’s director of digital, has seen an increased number of InsurTechs, which...

Staff | October 21, 2019 The vast majority (87 per cent) of Canadian business owners said they haven’t had any cannabis-related incidents in the workplace since recreational cannabis was legalized last October, according to a new survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Just eight per cent said they had experienced an incident, while five per cent were unsure. Employers with 100 to 499 employees were the most likely (22 per cent) to say they’d experienced an incident. By industry, hospitality (16 per cent), enterprises and administration management (14 per cent) and natural resources (11 per cent) were most likely to have had an incident. Read: Majority of Canadians say legalization of recreational pot not impacting workplace: survey The survey also found 65 per cent of small employers said they have a workplace drug and alcohol policy in place, while 34 per cent said they don’t and one per cent don’t know. Despite the lack of cannabis-related incidents, survey respondents still expressed concerns about cannabis in the workplace. Some 60 per cent said they aren’t satisfied with their provincial government’s education efforts around the topic, with 33 per cent ranking provincial education efforts as poor and a further 27 per cent considering them very poor. Just two per cent of respondents said the...

Yaelle Gang, the Canadian Investment Review | October 21, 2019 It’s been one month since Peter Lindley, the OPSEU Pension Trust’s new president and chief executive officer, started the role. With an engineering degree and a more than 30-year career in finance under his belt, Lindley’s most recent role was president and head of investments at State Street Global Advisors. “When I went to work at State Street I got to work with investors, mostly pension plans, and providing them with investment advice was something I found a lot of personal satisfaction in,” he says. The work led Lindley to eventually move to the asset-owner side of the industry. “I felt the next step in my career would be to join an asset owner and, as luck would have it, at the right time this opportunity came up and I was just really excited about it.” Read: OPTrust Select welcomes first members One of the reasons he was attracted to the OPTrust was its leadership in the responsible investment space, he says, noting this topic is very dear to his heart. “I’ve seen [it go] from something in the wilderness to being very mainstream today. So I was really pleased to see responsible...

Beatrice Daily Sun (Nebraska) It’s been 13 years since Ben Nelson was reelected to the Senate, romping to a second-term victory over a Republican newcomer named Pete Ricketts in 2006. The former Democratic senator – and former two-term governor – won that contest by 164,000 votes, and it marked the sixth Democratic victory in the past eight Senate elections in Nebraska at the time. Times have changed. Nelson’s 2006 win was the last big statewide victory for a Democratic nominee in Nebraska – and it hasn’t even been close since. Republicans have racked up victory margins ranging from 97,000 to 233,000 votes in contests for governor or U.S. Senate since Nelson left the statewide ballot. And Ricketts is now completing the first year of his second four-year gubernatorial term after handily winning reelection in 2018. Nelson is back home in Omaha, busy, engaged and visibly contented. He recently was named the CEO of Florida-based Insurance Care Direct, one of the nation’s largest health and life insurance agencies, and he’s an attorney in the Lamson Dugan & Murray law firm headquartered on Regency Parkway Drive not far from his home. And he’s writing a book about the Senate and his time...

Toronto, ON (Oct. 18, 2019) – As the snowbird season gets underway, the Canadian Snowbird Association (CSA) is reminding Ontario travellers that OHIP’s Out-of-Country (OOC) Travellers Program is scheduled to be terminated on January 1, 2020. The program currently reimburses Ontario residents travelling outside of Canada between $200 and $400 per day for emergency inpatient services and up to $50 per day for emergency outpatient services. Despite being protected under the Canada Health Act (CHA), the Ontario Government has opted to proceed with the unprecedented cuts to all reimbursement for emergency medical services received outside of Canada. The termination of the OOC Travellers Program will make Ontario the only jurisdiction in Canada to eliminate coverage altogether. This decision will ultimately increase the cost of private travel medical insurance by an estimated 7.5 per cent. “Since our inception, the CSA has strongly recommended that travellers purchase adequate travel health insurance prior to their departure” said Karen Huestis, president of the Canadian Snowbird Association. “Unfortunately, the short-sighted health care cuts made by the Ontario Government will make it more expensive to obtain this essential coverage.” About the Canadian Snowbird Association The Canadian Snowbird Association is a non-profit, non-partisan organization representing more than...

Staff | October 18, 2019 The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is committing $50 million towards Quebec seed funds and is charging venture capital firm Teralys Capital with supporting the funds it invests in. Seed funds are venture capital funds dedicated to supporting new startups with financing and ongoing support. “Without a rich and dynamic startup ecosystem, there is a risk of considerably fewer quality investment opportunities in the subsequent growth and maturity phases, especially in disruptive niches,” said Charles Émond, the Caisse’s executive vice-president and head of Quebec investments and global strategic planning, in a press release. “It is therefore key to invest at the very start, when companies are created, and then monitor their progress over time.” Read: Caisse invests in Quebec venture capital tech firm The Caisse said another funding commitment goal is to professionalize new Quebec seed managers and make sure they engage in funding best practices. The organization has upped its involvement in Quebec venture capital funds over the past five years, including investing in various seed funds, such as Anges Quebec Capital, InnovExport and Real Ventures. Those funds were among the backers of Quebec startups Hopper, Breather Products Inc., Dialogue and AlayaCare, in which the Caisse later directly invested. Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com

The Chubb Cyber IndexSM provides global claims and policy data, incident response costs analysis, and insights into cyber insurance limits and deductibles Whitehouse Station, NJ (Oct. 16, 2019) – Chubb has enhanced its proprietary Chubb Cyber IndexSM with upgraded features that help identify a range of global cyber threats based on an organization’s industry and size. The new tool also offers cost analysis, insights on cyber insurance limits and deductibles, and an estimated incident costs calculator that helps organizations better understand how to protect themselves against current and emerging cyber threats. “Since first launching in 2018, this award-winning tool has given users access to real-time data on current and historical cyber threats. By integrating Chubb’s global capabilities and these new robust risk analysis features, we are now able to offer entities a view into the tangible ramifications of a digital attack,” said Michael Tanenbaum, Executive Vice President, Head of Chubb Cyber North America. “With these feature enhancements, the Chubb Cyber Index provides an industry leading digital resource that enables users to pinpoint their individual exposures and provides them with the resources and tools to better protect their organizations.” The newly enhanced Chubb Cyber IndexSM now provides additional insight into costs...