INSURANCE BUREAU OF CANADA (IBC) MRAT LAUNCH, NOVEMBER 21, 2013

The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC)’s president and CEO Don Forgeron gave a lunch address at the Economic Club of Canada, located at Toronto’s Intercontinental Hotel, on November 21. The presentation title was Adaptation Through Innovation: The MRAT Story.Forgeron discussed the municipal risk assessment tool (MRAT), a web-based aid to help calculate the probability of municipal sewer backflows now and that may also serve as an underwriting tool to calculate risk in future. Forgeron told attendees that MRAT is being launched as a pilot project in partnership with the communities of Coquitlam, B.C., Fredericton, N.B. and Hamilton, Ont. “Insurers and municipalities have a key role to play in preparing their cities for a new era of severe weather and we are pleased to be partnering with these three forward thinking cities,” he said. Called the first climate adaptation technology of its kind, MRAT is designed to help municipalities identify vulnerabilities in their sewer and stormwater infrastructures and to prioritize improvements to prevent sewer back-ups. Changing weather, resulting in more torrential rain and flooding, is overwhelming vulnerable sewer and storm water infrastructure and causing sewer back-ups and basement flooding. The genesis of MRAT “was the realization that infrastructure failure in Canada was responsible for the majority of evermounting insured losses that accompanied rainstorms across the country,” he said.