Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Staff | September 19, 2019 The British Columbia Investment Management Corp., the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan are among 42 global firms acting to implement ideas to increase diversity and inclusion in investment management. This commitment to action is part of the CFA Institute’s Experimental Partners Program, which was inspired by a guide that includes 20 ideas generated by roundtables with industry experts. Each firm will focus on three ideas from the guide and create action plans to implement them in the next 18 to 24 months. The ideas selected most commonly relate to finding better ways to understand and manage biases in hiring and advancement. Read: How institutional investors are turning the gender diversity dial on corporate boards “Incorporating diverse perspectives into investment decision-making improves investor outcomes and encourages our industry to embrace different viewpoints,” said Margaret Franklin, president and chief executive officer of the CFA Institute, in a press release. “We are pleased that so many firms have joined us on this journey to take decisive steps to strengthen our industry.” The participating firms will provide confidential quarterly updates to the CFA Institute on their progress. At the end of the program period,...

Staff | September 19, 2019 The Liberal Party announced a number of campaign promises this week, including making maternity and parental benefits tax-free, introducing a 15-week leave for adoptive parents, strengthening the old-age security benefit and increasing the Canada Pension Plan and Quebec Pension Plan survivor’s benefit. If re-elected, the Liberal government said it will work to establish guaranteed paid family leave, a program that would make sure parents who don’t qualify for paid leave through employment insurance or don’t get enough will receive a guaranteed income during the first year of their child’s life.  Read: Federal government seeking to add more paid personal leave days “Every parent knows that raising kids is expensive — especially in that first year,” said Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. “With everything else on their plates, the last thing new parents need to worry about is making ends meet. That’s why we’ll be there for families, so they can be there for their kids.” In addition, the Liberals said they’d increase old-age security benefits by 10 per cent — an extra $729 on average, according to a press release. It also pledged to raise the CPP and QPP survivor’s benefit by 25 per cent for an increase in...

Government delivers emergency funding to Islanders Charlottetown, PE (Sept. 17, 2019) – Residents of Prince Edward Island will be able to access emergency funding from government in the coming days to help recover costs associated with damages following Hurricane Dorian. The province’s first-ever Provincial Disaster Assistance Program will be rolled out early next week to help Islanders with costs to repair or replace uninsurable, essential basic property loss due to disasters. The program will also apply to small businesses, not-for-profit organizations and municipal governments. “We have never seen the province-wide impacts like what we experienced following Hurricane Dorian. This is an unprecedented situation that has touched all of us in one way or another. We are in this together and we are here to help Islanders. While we are still early days in being able to understand the true impacts to individuals, businesses, industries and communities, it is important that government start to roll-out financial support to help those who need it most.” – Premier Dennis King Provincial Cabinet met Friday afternoon to begin activating the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program. This important step also triggers access to disaster relief funding from the federal government. Details about how and where Islanders...

Holistic solution improves the resiliency of businesses in an increasingly volatile world New York, NY (Sept. 16, 2019) – QBE North America, an integrated specialist insurer, is pleased to announce the launch of an enhanced cyber solution to help protect customers from the growing risk of cyber threats. With the addition of a new admitted cyber form, The Solution for Cyber Risk now offers a holistic risk management solution for businesses that combines insurance with cyberattack prevention services as well as post-breach response assistance. “This solution was truly developed with the business customer in mind. It’s a paradigm shift from simply providing insurance to offering an integrated, holistic risk solution that helps improve the sustainability of our customers—making them more resilient to evolving cyber risks,” said Steven Anderson, Vice President, Vice President/Product Leader – Cyber, QBE North America. Comprehensive Coverage The Solution for Cyber Risk’s new admitted form has coverage for cyber liability; media liability for digital and electronic publication; data breach notification costs; asset rectification costs; regulatory defense and penalty costs; public relations fees; forensics; business interruption; and extortion and credit monitoring. It offers easy-to-read policy language, first and third-party insurance clauses and fewer exclusions, which are clearly articulated...

St. John’s, NL (Sept. 16, 2019) – ClearRisk is changing the way risk managers can leverage data for risk optimization in Canada. This week the St. John’s-based company launched its next-generation data solution, ClearRisk Insights, to industry-leading risk managers at the Risk Management Society of Canada Conference in Edmonton. “We are changing the landscape of risk management with innovative tools like ClearRisk Insights that better enable risk managers through the effective use of their highly valuable data,” said ClearRisk Founder and CEO Craig Rowe. “We developed this solution knowing that organizations are producing important data in large quantities but without the tools to fully leverage it. With the launch of Insights, we are providing a tool to maximize the value of data available to our customers through automation, integration and analytics in a way that simply wasn’t available before.” Combining the power of automation, integration and analytics, ClearRisk Insights brings together the entire risk management, insurance and claims ecosystem with any data source and third-party system to provide this new cloud-based solution to risk managers. Data that was previously buried, is brought to light automatically to significantly reduce administration time, automate important processes, and make sure that important risk developments...

Kelsey Rolfe | September 19, 2019 As the gap continues to widen between required infrastructure spending and actual dedicated funds, according to the G20, private infrastructure projects represent a strong opportunity for institutional investors. Speaking at TD Asset Management Inc.’s institutional investment symposium in Toronto on Wednesday, Matthew Press, the firm’s vice-president of infrastructure investments, said the funding gap in the G20 countries is projected to reach $15 trillion over the next 20 years. Read: Global investors turn to infrastructure, real estate as interest rates normalize: report The gap has emerged as successive global governments have proposed extensive infrastructure spending, often during election years, to promote economic growth and job creation. The long timeframe required to build these projects often means they outlast a government’s electoral mandate, causing them, in some cases, to fall by the wayside. Also, infrastructure spending is often downloaded from federal and state or provincial ministries to municipalities that are cash-strapped and lacking the experience to get projects built, said Press. “This represents a fantastic opportunity. Just to put it in perspective: that’s the equivalent of all listed equities combined, all of their market caps combined.” Global institutional investors are already ramping up in a low-yield environment, noted Press,...

Staff | September 19, 2019 The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is making its first infrastructure investment in Indonesia, with the acquisition of a 45 per cent interest in PT Lintas Marga Sedaya, the concession holder and operator of the Cipali toll road, a critical link in the transportation network of the island of Java. PT Baskhara Utama Sedaya, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PT Astra Tol Nusantara, currently owns a 45 per cent stake and will increase that to 55 per cent, while the CPPIB will acquire the remaining 45 per cent stake. “We are pleased to invest in the Cipali toll road alongside Astra Infra, a knowledgeable and sophisticated local partner, and look forward to a successful long-term relationship between our two organizations,” said Scott Lawrence, managing director and head of infrastructure at the CPPIB, in a press release. “Cipali toll road provides CPPIB access to a vital infrastructure development supported by rising motorization rates in one of the most densely populated and economically productive regions in Indonesia.” Read: Which emerging markets should investors be considering? In other investment news, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is making a $53 million investment in Neuvoo.ca, a Canadian employment website. The cash injection is intended to enable the company...

Following almost a decade of wealth accumulation, the average Canadian household’s net worth declined slightly in 2018, dropping 1.1 per cent or $7,594 to $678,792 by the end of the year. Although national real estate values continued to rise, climbing 1.6 per cent or $6,336 on the year, these gains were offset by the significant pullback equity markets experienced late in 2018. The WealthScapes report by Environics Analytics found that overall investment portfolios dipped 7.3 per cent on the year to $181,231. Traditional bank deposits grew 4.4 per cent to $100,212 while higher interest rates also encouraged savers to buy GICs and term deposits. These jumped 10.3 per cent during the year to $41,645. The average value of real estate held by Canadians rose 1.6 per cent to $393,789 in 2018. Household debt on the rise Household debt levels, meanwhile, also climbed 2.3 per cent, while higher interest rates reduced employer pension plan values by $576 or 0.4 per cent. Provincially, British Columbia remains the wealthiest province in the country, with a savings rate more than five times greater than the national average. Four provinces: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and Alberta, all saw the average debt per household decline in...

The Associated Press  | September 18, 2019 Contract talks between the United Auto Workers and General Motors Company showed some signs of progress this week as a strike by more than 49,000 employees extended into a second day. The walkout brought more than 50 factories and parts warehouses to a standstill in the union’s first strike against the U.S. automaker in over a decade. Workers left factories and formed picket lines shortly after midnight Monday in the dispute over a new four-year contract. “They are talking, they’ve made progress, we’ll see how long it takes,’” said Brian Rothenberg, spokesman for the UAW. Read: GM Canada pension plan reaches fully funded status One of the main sticking points is health care. GM is looking to cut its costs, but workers say they shouldn’t have to pay more because the company is making billions in profits. Union workers pay about four per cent of their health-care costs, but employees of large companies in the U.S. pay an average of 34 per cent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Tina Black, who finishes up 10-speed automatic transmissions at a GM engine and transmission factory in the Detroit suburb of Romulus, said health insurance is the most important issue to her and she doesn’t want GM to change anything. The factory workers, she said, work 10-12 hours doing the same repetitive tasks,...

The Canadian Press | September 18, 2019 The University of California is dumping fossil fuel investments from its nearly $84 billion pension and endowment funds, calling them a financial risk. An opinion article in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times says the university will make its endowment fund “fossil free” by month’s end and its pension fund, which covers 320,000 people, will soon follow.  Read: Divesting from fossil fuels doesn’t mean sacrificing returns: report The article was written by the university’s treasurer and the chair of its Board of Regents Investment Committee. A global campaign for universities and other organizations to disinvest has been waged by climate activists for nearly a decade but the article says the decision was made for financial rather than political reasons. The article says the university is placing bets “that clean energy will fuel the world’s future.” Read the full article at BenefitsCanada.com