Insurance Blogs hosted by Canadian Underwriter
Insurance Blogs hosted by Canadian Underwriter
One of the biggest challenges of educating people about natural hazard risk is having to first cut through the myths and misconceptions that envelope essentially every hazard, from earthquake to flood and – yes – tornado. Stop me if you’ve…
When a homeowner gets water in the house, they call it a flood. It doesn’t matter to them how it happened (pipe or municipal water main break; toilet, water heater, dishwasher or washing machine failure; seepage; sewer backup; riverine; storm…
When illustrating the general trend in disaster losses just a handful of graphs tend to get used the most. When showing the international trend, the most frequently used exhibits are those published by Swiss Re and Munich Re. For the…
On a recent long haul flight I finally broke down and watched ‘Only the Brave’, the 2017 Josh Brolin movie about the 19 wildland firefighters killed at Yarnell Hill, Arizona in June, 2013. Up to that point, I had refused…
We live in an age of ‘Big Data’. And while it seems to me that the actual term is being used less and less these days (indicating, perhaps, that the concept has become mainstreamed), the overall notion is alive and…
If we expect to make any progress on the natural disaster risk reduction front, we are going to have to come to a few understandings. Here are just a few of the things we will have to make peace with:…
Every once in a while, a unique or particularly severe insured loss event or series of events forces (re)insurers to re-evaluate the assumptions they make about the risks they take onto their balance sheets. This is usually either because something…
Hurricane Andrew slammed into South Florida on August 23 and 24, 1992 – and changed the insurance industry forever. This article was first published in the October 1999 issue of Swiss Re Canada’s ‘review’, a popular monthly technical reinsurance newsletter…
Return period calculations placed in the hands of those who don’t know what they are or how they work can be dangerous things. Take the storm in Saskatoon July 10. A reporter for Global News wrote: “Torrential rain and hail…
The recent flooding in Ottawa, Gatineau, Laval and other places brought four main issues to the fore. First, is the matter of buying out homeowners located in the floodway, the 1 in 20 flood plain. Second, is the need to…
As this is being written, floodwaters are slowly receding after having inundated some 300 homes in the Ottawa area, and nearly 4,000 properties in the province of Quebec. And judging by modern Canadian history, there is a really good chance…
The Fort McMurray wildfire will end up costing government (read: taxpayers) and insurers considerably more than the flooding in southern Alberta in 2013. However, it appears to be the flood that is having – and will continue to have –…
It’s early March and Alberta has already ramped-up preparations for the 2017 wildfire season. Indeed, the province – through an amended Forest and Prairie Protection Act – has codified the start of wildfire season as March 1. According to the Whitecourt…
A preliminary study by an economist at Edmonton’s MacEwan University reports that the direct and indirect economic costs from the Fort McMurray wildfire currently sit at about $9.5 billion, and that the estimate will likely go higher as new data…