Buyer Beware

Floods involving property damage are nothing new in Canada — the Canadian Disaster Database from Public Safety Canada indicates that more than 300 overland flood events have occurred in the country since 1900 — but it was really the 2013 southern Alberta flooding that brought the peril to the fore.

That event, Canada’s costliest insured natural disaster until last year’s wildfire in Fort McMurray, raised a host of questions, including why overland flood insurance was not available in Canada, why the country’s flood maps are in the state they are, and why homeowners and others do not have proper access to information to help them determine whether or not their existing properties are safe or whether or not a prospective property is at risk.

Glenn McGillivray, Managing Director, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction

While much has been written about the first two, not much has been said of the third. However a blog this past May — posted by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction to the Canadian Underwriter insBlogs site — discussed the matter of creating a formal mechanism through which home buyers can be informed of the level of flood risk for a particular property.

Read the full article in the Digital Edition of the October 2017 Canadian Underwriter.

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