Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Annual BCAA School Zone Safety Survey shows unsafe driving, including speeding and unsafe drop offs/pick ups continues to put kids in danger Burnaby, BC (Sept. 25, 2019) – B.C. parents get a ‘C-’ for their driving behaviours in school zones according to this year’s annual BCAA School Zone Safety Survey with illegal parking, unsafe drop offs/pick ups and speeding the issues most witnessed during this year’s first week back to class. For several years, BCAA’s surveys of school employees and parents who drop-off/pick up kids at elementary schools across the province have identified persistent bad driving behaviours witnessed during the busy first week of school. This year, BCAA took the extra step with research firm Insights West to grade survey results. “This isn’t about shaming parents,” says Shawn Pettipas, BCAA’s Director of Community Engagement. “It’s about raising awareness of what’s happening in school zones across the province and reminding parents to slow down and drive kind so no one gets hurt.” Failing grades Parent drivers score an F grade for illegal parking with 67% of respondents seeing that happen. They also get an F for unsafe drop offs/pick ups: 61% saw it outside designated areas and 62% witnessed parents allowing...

New ransomware event modeling capability in Cyence for Cyber Risk Management designed to help insurers accurately underwrite in an evolving cyber landscape San Mateo, CA (Sept. 24, 2019) – Guidewire Software, Inc., provider of the industry platform Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers rely upon, has announced the immediate availability of the fourth-generation model update (Model 4) for Guidewire Cyence™ for Cyber Risk Management – an enhanced cyber event risk modeling solution that includes a new event modeling scenario designed to estimate the origin of losses resulting from a mass business interruption following a ransomware event. Ransomware criminals have grown more advanced, selective, and concentrated with their attacks. In the first quarter of 2019, ransomware attacks grew by 118%, new ransomware families were detected, and threat actors used innovative techniques.[1] Attackers are looking for higher payouts from selected targets, and this trend shifts the victim profile from consumer to enterprise. Ransomware attacks in 2018 crippled numerous types of businesses, large and small, worldwide. “Guidewire is at the forefront of cyber risk modeling, and we continue to evolve our data and models to enable insurers to more accurately underwrite and assess the latest cyber threats,” said George Ng, chief technology officer, Cyence...

Martha Porado | September 27, 2019 Students around the world have been skipping school to march in protest of global leaders’ inaction on  climate change, and now certain employers are enabling their employees to do so as well. Vancouver-based Lush Cosmetics North America will be shutting down its 50 Canadian stores, as well as its online shopping system and its manufacturing facilities. “Greta’s invitation is something we decided to accept,” says Carleen Pickard, an ethical campaigns specialist at Lush, referring to Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenage climate activist at the forefront of the climate strike effort. Read: Citigroup staff plant trees, work at food banks for annual volunteering day Helping employees participate in the demonstration is an extension of Lush’s philosophy that workers should be able to live their values, including in the workplace, she says. “For us, not only does business recognize the climate crisis and the emergency, but for the past year there’s been this increasing awareness that staff have been impacted by the effects of the climate crisis. So whether it’s the flooding in Houston, hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Florida, wildfires all up and down the West coast, hearing staff both not being able to come to work, but their...

Staff | September 27, 2019 The Ontario Medical Association is partnering with Common Wealth to offer its physician members and their spouses access to a retirement plan. The Advantages Retirement Plan, which will be rolled out later this year, is the result of more than two years of research on physician retirement readiness and input from OMA members. A survey conduced among 1,235 members found just 20 per cent said they feel very confident about their retirement readiness. More than a third said they felt not very confident (22 per cent) or not at all confident (13 per cent). And 30 per cent said they’re not contributing to a retirement savings plan at all. Read: 2019 CAP Member Survey: Helping each generation on their retirement journey The research also identified several attributes that create a distinct set of retirement security needs for the medical profession. These include that most physicians are self-employed, incorporated professionals who often draw income from multiple sources; they have unique earning patterns and more student debt compared to most Canadians; their life expectancies are higher than the Canadian average; and they view retirement as a gradual process rather than a one-time event. “Taken together, these factors mean that physicians require a...

Staff | September 27, 2019 Over the last year, companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange have seen little movement in the proportion of female executive officers on their boards, according to an annual report by Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP. The study, which looked at diversity disclosure practices relating to women in leadership roles by TSX-listed companies, found that, among companies that disclose the information, women now hold more than 18 per cent of board seats. This compares to 12 per cent in 2012 and marks the highest proportion since the law firm started the report five years ago. Among S&P/TSX 60 companies, women now hold 30.2 per cent of available board seats.  Read: How institutional investors are turning the gender diversity dial on corporate boards However, the data also showed that the year-over-year rate of increase in the proportion of board seats held by women is starting to slow. It was 2.5 per cent between 2016 to 2017, 1.9 per cent the following year and is now down to 1.7 per cent. Fortunately, 22.5 per cent of all TSX-listed companies and a majority (52.7 per cent) of S&P/TSX 60 companies have adopted targets for the proportion of women directors on their boards, a five per cent increase compared to 2018. As...

PR Newswire Traditional insurance carriers, beset by slow growth and high churn, are seeking new ways to attract and retain customers. While customers still trust their primary insurers the most when it comes to providing the next insurance product, they are still switching carriers more often and are increasingly open to new entrants, including insurtechs, big tech and other nontraditional players. Smart insurers are taking a cue from their own customers, many of whom already use connected devices to monitor their cars, their homes and their health. Working with Dynata, an online global market research company, Bain & Company surveyed nearly170,000 insurance customers in 16 countries and found that worldwide, 39 percent of insurance customers currently use at least one connected device, and about 72 percent expect to use one in the future. Insurers can use the data collected by these devices to develop products and services that are geared to their customers’ individual needs. These are among the findings of Bain’s fifth global survey of retail insurance customers, Insurers: How to Lead in the New Era of Connectivity. “Connectivity is the future of the insurance industry.  Customers have spoken and they expect a truly integrated, seamless and digital experience...

Property Fire Score (PFS) leverages proprietary data sets and thousands of fires to create the industry’s first property-specific fire risk estimate San Diego, CA (Sept. 25, 2019) – HazardHub, the fastest-growing supplier of geospatial risk data in the United States, is excited to announce the release Property Fire Score (PFS), the first system ever to measure the risk of fire for an individual property. Brady Foust, Chief Scientist of HazardHub says, “We’ve spent the last 18 months diving into the factors that impact the severity of fires at a specific property. We’ve examined thousands of fires and hundreds of variables to determine that fire damage of a property is impacted by three powerful factors – drive time to the nearest station, the type of responding station and the presence of accessible water. PFS is the first tool to measure risk at the property level. No more ‘one size fits all’ area-level measurements.” Property Fire Score leverages the power of two databases unique to HazardHub – a national Fire Station Database of over 55,000 stations and HydrantHub, the largest collection of fire hydrants in the country. For areas without hydrants, HazardHub accesses their high-resolution perennial water database. When combined with road...

Staff | September 26, 2019 Canadian employers are going beyond traditional health benefits to address all the facets of their employees’ well-being, according to a new survey by global staffing firm Robert Half. The survey found employers are offering physical (63 per cent), financial (65 per cent) and mental (73 per cent) wellness programs. As well, organizations are covering at least some of the cost for these physical and financial (51 per cent each) and mental (64 per cent) wellness resources. Read: Award winners discuss paths to improving employees’ well-being “Companies must be responsive to evolving standards for work-life wellness if they hope to attract and retain talented teams,” said David King, senior district president for Robert Half, in a press release. “Employees are looking for benefits that go beyond conventional health plans to include more unique options, such as retirement planning and stress management courses, that support them both personally and professionally.” According to employer respondents, the most common perks offered are flexible work schedules or telecommuting options (50 per cent), paid parental leave (47 per cent) and employee discounts (42 per cent). However, for employees, the most valued wellness offerings are fitness facilities or programs (24 per cent), ergonomic evaluations and equipment (22 per cent) and incentives for engaging in...

Martha Porado  | September 26, 2019 Oxford Properties Group, the real estate investment arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System, announced the winners of its global Hackathon competition, which awards prizes to innovators for their work to disrupt the design and construction process of commercial real estate. As real estate has proven to be an increasingly important asset class for pension plans, delving into new trends in how space is used and how it’s constructed is key to ensuring the group allocates its capital optimally, says Dean Hopkins, chief operations officer at Oxford Properties Group. Read: Caisse invests in Chile ports, Ivanhoé Cambridge launches real estate platform “When we think about Oxford and trying to figure out where to invest capital in the right buildings, in the right markets, we realized we need to be thoughtful about the direction . . .  in every sector of real estate to make sure we’re staying current,” he says. The Hackathon provides 500 entrants with 48 hours to tackle pressing issues in commercial real estate development. Across four global events, the participants were divided into 50 teams, with 12 teams awarded a cash prize. “It’s an industry that for a long time did not change,” says Hopkins. “But we’re now entering a phase...

St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia (Sept. 20, 2019) – With Queensland’s catastrophic wildfires front-of-mind, a strategic management academic from The University of Queensland (UQ) Business School is urging for adaptation of the insurance industry to assist in society’s ability to recover from climate change-related disasters. The increasing frequency and severity of climate-change-driven disasters has led to calls for greater collaboration between the insurance industry and state policy makers, including investment in open-source risk models, which could improve society’s ability to recover from disasters linked to climate change. UQ Business School strategic management expert, Professor Paula Jarzabkowski and her co-authors recommend that climate-risk models and data be better used to inform policy makers of the hazards and vulnerabilities in their respective countries. “We need joined-up policy-making between treasury, environment and disaster-management divisions within government. These divisions must also work collaboratively with development agencies to put climate risk data at the heart of national adaptation strategies,” Professor Jarzabkowski said. “Increasing our ability to recover from specific disasters and promoting both financial and physical resilience to its effects, is vital to society – and insurance is a key tool in this,” she added. “Using insurance is a step towards risk management and it...