Insurance Blogs hosted by Canadian Underwriter
Insurance Blogs hosted by Canadian Underwriter
From time to time, the global re/insurance industry experiences a loss or series of losses that forces market participants to re-evaluate what they thought they knew about a given hazard. Three examples of such shock losses are Hurricane Andrew (1992),…
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Right from the get go, it is instilled in us that fire has very few redeeming qualities if any at all. Essentially nothing good ever comes from fire, or so we’re told. It’s an evil force that must be quelled,…
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Stephen Dishart served as Managing Director of Corporate Communication and HR for Swiss Re’s Americas Division at the time of the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. He led the strategic communication team that worked very closely with senior management…
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To the lay person, it only stands to reason that a business interruption policy would respond to what for many enterprises isn’t merely an interruption in their business, it is quite possibly a death knell. This is certainly the sentiment…
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P & C industry professionals, commercial insurance brokers and underwriters all love stats. After all, our entire industry is based on analyzing data and understanding trends. So, before we get started, let me start off with some statistics about the…
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In this piece, industry veteran Phil Cook makes a number of good points about the current state of the p&c market in Canada. Cook makes the distinction between a hard market and a difficult market, sharing that he is not…
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There is an old joke that has a young Senate intern at a fairly high-level Washington, D.C. cocktail party. The intern approaches a four-star general standing alone and engages in small talk. “Wow, that’s a lot of medals you have…
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After a string of costly and disruptive floods in Canada in recent years, beginning with the $1.5 billion insured loss event in Southern Alberta in June 2013 and the $1 billion insured event in Toronto just a few weeks later,…
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Some claims made by climate science deniers would be downright hilarious if they weren’t so dangerous. I mean, I really don’t know where people come up with some of the things they maintain are fact. And I really don’t get…
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Insurance and insurers have been around for millennia, with modern insurance starting in the U.K. more than 300 years ago. For much of this time, incumbent insurers have been protected from competition by four big barriers: regulation, the law of large numbers, the trust nature of insurance, and, last but not least, the inertia of […]
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Nine provinces and one territory in the country have formal disaster assistance programs designed to help homeowners, renters, small business owners, not-for-profits and local governments recover after a loss event. Prince Edward Island, Yukon and Nunavut do not currently have…
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In some years, it’s water. In others, it’s wildfire or hail. This year, it was extreme wind that stood out as a major driver of insured catastrophic loss in Canada. Indeed, just two events – the May 4 Southern Ontario/Quebec…
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The following letter to the Editor was submitted to the St. John’s (Newfoundland) Telegram in response to a column on auto insurance on November 21 by Brian Jones. Amanda Dean, Vice-President, Atlantic, for Insurance Bureau of Canada offered this response…
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It is somewhat understandable why most Canadians seem to know virtually nothing about how building codes work in this country. After all, a person might only really be exposed to code-related issues if they were having a new home built…
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