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Senior execs to discuss a post-COVID world in the Canadian P&C industry


January 22, 2021   by David Gambrill


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With the arrival in Canada of vaccines for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, it’s now possible for the country’s property and casualty insurance industry to conceive of a post-COVID world.

What will the Canadian P&C industry look like after September 2021? (This is the timeline that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has set for administering COVID vaccines to a majority of the Canadian population.)

Canadian Underwriter will put this question — and many other pandemic-related questions — to three senior P&C industry executives in our webinar, Canada’s P&C Industry in a Post-COVID world, held on Monday, Jan. 25 at 1 p.m. ET.

The webinar panellists are Carol Jardine, president of Canadian operations at Wawanesa Mutual Insurance; Matthew Turak, group president of insurance at CAA Club Group; and Jason Storah, CEO of Aviva Canada. The executives will share their views on the effects of the pandemic on the P&C industry — everything from the future of working from home, to the effect of the end of the pandemic on the current hard market.

It’s been a long time since the end of the pandemic has come into view. For nine months, COVID-19 has wreaked havoc in Canada, profoundly affecting the industry and the clients they serve. Governments have issued lockdown orders to keep people from spreading the virus, which has infected more than 700,000 Canadians and killed 18,000.

Lockdown orders have caused businesses to shut their doors and limit their activity, sending the Canadian economy into a tailspin. Clients sought premium relief at a time when the industry was in the middle of its worst hard market cycle in decades.

Necessity is the mother of invention. On a moment’s notice, the P&C industry arranged to have their staff working from home where possible to avoid the spread of the virus. A recent Canadian Underwriter survey shows most P&C industry professionals thought working from home would last six months at the most. Now, nine months after the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, 86% of the P&C industry is still working from home.



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