Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

Plans for a Canadian Drug Agency and funding toward rare diseases may not address the root causes of problems

The scaleback of a youth pharmacare program launched just last year leaves at least one household in the lurch

March 26– Mar. 26–Sears has ended life insurance benefits for eligible retirees, one of the final links to the days when the company promised generous benefits to take care of its workers. The life insurance benefits were canceled March 15, though some retirees didn’t receive letters notifying them of the change until after that date, said Ron Olbrysh, chairman of the National Association of Retired Sears Employees. It’s unclear how many Sears’ retirees will lose coverage, but the company paid about $16.6 million in premiums for eligible retirees for the year that ended Dec. 31, 2017, according to a report on benefits that Olbrysh said he and other retirees received. A company attorney declined to comment. Retirees can convert all or part of their group life insurance policies to individual whole life policies and pay the premiums, according to the letter sent to retirees. Sears had already sacrificed popular employee perks amid longstanding financial struggles, including significant cuts to life insurance coverage in 1997. But the company still covered life insurance policies worth at least $5,000 for eligible retirees, according to Olbrysh, who said the average policy ranged from $8,000 to $10,000. When the company sought bankruptcy protection in October,...

Six insurance industry professional associations and four life insurance carriers have joined forces to address issues that affect the industry and their respective members. The Industry Alignment Group will mark its third anniversary May 1. The leadership teams of the associations have been meeting regularly since 2016 to discuss “what we might be able to do in the spirit of better communication, collaboration and ultimately perhaps even consolidation,” said Warren May of Principal Financial. May is Principal’s national vice president-life distribution and serves as the group’s chairman. The group includes representatives from the following associations: National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, Association for Advanced Life Underwriting, National Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies, GAMA International, Women in Insurance and Financial Services and Life Happens. The carriers represented are Principal, New York Life and MetLife. May said Northwestern Mutual initially was part of the group but is not active in it now. Economics, declining association membership and the value proposition of membership were some of the driving factors leading to the group’s formation, May said. “I think a fair amount of this was driven by the questions: What value am I getting for the money I pay? Is it the...

Renee Burrington was shaking, holding a framed picture of her sister as she stood before Berrien County Trial Court Judge Gordon Hosbein. She had waited a year and a half for this day, to address the man found guilty of killing her sister in August 2017. John Lewis, 49, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole Monday in the death of his wife, 55-year-old Carla Lewis. He was found guilty on Feb. 20 of premeditated murder after a two-week trial. “I wake up every morning wishing it was a bad dream. I go to sleep every night reliving the night that I got a phone call from my dad telling me my sister had been shot and killed,” Burrington said in court. “I have nightmares thinking about how she died. She was all alone except for her killer, you, John, her husband who was supposed to protect her. Carla did not deserve this horrible ending.” While the judge asked those speaking not to turn and face Lewis, that did not stop any of them from sharing their pain and anger. Renee Burrington’s husband, Len Burrington, thanked everyone who helped get justice for Carla. “May you burn in hell,”...

New policy manual rule and rating factors account for effect of advanced driver assistance systems Jersey City, NJ (Mar. 25, 2019) – ISO has introduced new solutions to help auto insurers underwrite and price coverage for the growing number of cars with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). ISO is a Verisk business and a leading… Read more » The post ISO Introduces Solutions for Insuring Vehicles with Driver Assistance Features appeared first on Insurance-Canada.ca.

Thomas McKown, a 27-year-old ex-Marine, drove off one night in a Chevy Chevelle from his home on Fontana Ave. in Chesapeake, Va., and simply never returned. At least that’s the story his wife told police when she reported him missing on Jan. 7, 1969. Cora McKown, 22, a lithe brunette who favored hip-hugging pencil skirts and stiletto heels, went door to door, asking about her husband. “He just walked out of the house and said he’d be back,” she explained. That struck the missing man’s friends as unlikely. McKown, known as Timmy, seemed happy to rejoin civilian life after a taxing tour of duty in Vietnam. He found a decent job as a welder on a military base and doted on the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Natalie. The McKowns married in 1965 in Cora’s native southern California, when she was the teenage daughter of a prominent Long Beach builder, and he was doing his patriotic chore at Camp Pendleton. The vanished dad drew a shrug from Chesapeake police — just another low-priority missing person. But the gumshoes got motivated two months along, on March 8, when a headless, handless male corpse bobbed up in an Elizabeth River marsh in Portsmouth, six...

A recent RateSupermarket.ca survey revealed over half of Canadians would choose to renovate their current home, instead of moving to a new home, if they had a budget of $50,000. With the current high-interest-rate environment and introduction of stricter mortgage regulations, there has been great focus in the media on potential Canadian homeowners struggling to break into the market. These factors also impact current Canadian homeowners and their ability to relocate, however the survey found that the main reasons Canadian’s would rather renovate their existing home than move are comfort and convenience – with a large number saying they simply like their current home and neighbourhood too much to move. Less than a third of respondents cited affordability as the deciding factor in their choice of “renovate” over “move”.   Who would rather renovate than move? The survey found a majority of Canadians in every age group would choose to renovate their home, but there was a clear difference among older Canadians. Forty-three percent of respondents aged between 18 and 25 says they would consider moving, with that number dropping to less than 20 percent among older Canadians aged over 65. Additionally, those who live in suburban or rural areas...

A new report by TD Securities predicts the Bank of Canada (BoC) will hold its benchmark rate, where it currently sits at 1.75 per cent, for the remainder of 2019. The report is called, “BoC Outlook: This is the End” by Andrew Kelvin, TD’s Senior Canada Rates strategist. He says, recent economic data suggests that if the BoC moves in 2019, it is more likely to be a rate cut than an increase. This is a dramatic U-turn from what Canadians were hearing only a few months ago. In Q4 of 2018 economists were predicting up to four rates hikes by the Bank of Canada in 2019. By year end it was reduced to three and now some, like Kelvin, are saying none. But, all of this should come as no surprise. Oil prices fell dramatically in October, business sentiment is lower and household spending is down. Added to this, the latest GDP report shows Canada’s economy came to a screeching halt in the last quarter of 2018. According to Statistics Canada, Canada’s economy grew by just 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter, for an annualized pace of 0.4 per cent. In its latest announcement the BoC held rates steady...

SEATTLE, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Milliman, Inc., a premier global consulting and actuarial firm, announces the results of a first-of-its-kind, industry-wide study that examines insurers’ experience with combination products – those that couple life or annuity policies with Long-Term Care (LTC) or Chronic Illness (CI) riders. The study, which includes data from 11 insurers (ten using life insurance-based plans and one using an annuity chassis) focused primarily on incidence rates, lapse / surrender rates, and mortality rates. Policies with LTC accelerated death benefit (ADB) riders and no extension of benefit (EOB) riders comprised about 60% of the exposures, while policies with CI ADB riders represented about 25% (none of which used the discounted death benefit approach); the remaining 15% of exposures were based on policies with both ADB and EOB LTC riders. All policies in the study accelerated the death benefit on a dollar-for-dollar basis. “Combination products are a growing segment in the marketplace, and there’s a need within the industry to begin to measure insurers’ experience,” says Carl Friedrich, a Milliman principal and consulting actuary and co-author of the study. “Study findings point to better-than-expected results for participating companies, information which can be used to inform key decisions in...