BRANDON, Man. – A massive blaze that burned through historic buildings in downtown Brandon last month caused about $25 million in damages and police now say it may have been started by people. Fire crews were called to the Christie’s…

Small insurers or mutuals may decide to partner with independent adjusting (IA) firms as a way of providing them with flexibility on costs and full-time staff. On May 30, Contractor Connection, a service line of IA firm Crawford & Company…

If water is the new fire, then what is weather? For Paul Kovacs, executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), weather is definitely what will be taking the lion’s share of payouts in the next quarter century.…

Will the legalization of recreational marijuana encourage some Canadians to start using pot? In jurisdictions where cannabis has been legalized “we see spikes in use at the onset of sales,” Lewis Koski, former director of the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division,…

Claims adjusting firm Crawford & Company (Canada), Inc. has launched a staffing solution designed to place Crawford claims management professionals in-house at their clients’ place of business to meet staffing demands associated with unexpected leaves, influxes in work volume or…

TORONTO – Even the iconic Eaton Centre mall wasn’t a refuge from the rain as a storm rolled through downtown Toronto on Wednesday afternoon. Numerous people posted videos on Twitter as water poured from the ceiling of the shopping centre.…

Rare events like the May 4 windstorm that primarily affected southern Ontario often cause the most damage, but are also the most difficult to generalize in catastrophe modelling predictions, according to a Canadian weather forecasting and research firm. “While the…

Telematics, which records data on vehicle behaviour, is used now mainly for underwriting, but the technology can also provide a treasure trove of information for claims adjusters, one vendor suggests. Auto insurance claims adjusters could potentially use telematics to determine…

With hundreds of claims from the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire still unresolved as of late last month, Alberta residents could be forgiven for still worrying about wildfire risks in their own backyard. The Canadian Press recently reported that as of…

Appliance Fire and Flood Claims – Part 1

Is the number of Canadian hurricanes getting larger, or are we just better at detecting them? Bob Robichaud, warning preparedness meteorologist with the Canadian Hurricane Centre (CHC), raised the question during a webinar on the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction…

In an auto accident claim involving back-to-back crashes, a woman who lost both her legs after being hit by a car is barred from suing the driver because the car that had carried her to the scene of the accident…