Canadian corporations are facing an increasingly litigious environment resembling that of the U.S., delegates were told at the Canadian Risk & Insurance Management Society conference held recently in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Dubbed “Risk on the Rock”, the conference’s speakers portrayed…
Brian Johnston, the former president of Liberty Canada Holdings and Cigna Insurance Company of Canada, has launched a new low-cost general insurance company, Markham General Insurance Company. The operation is capitalized at $20 million. Financially backed by a group of…
U.S. property and casualty insurers will pay homeowners and businesses an estimated $1.3 billion for insured property damage caused by Hurricane Floyd, according to preliminary calculations by the Insurance Services Office Inc. Hurricane Floyd hit 16 states, from Florida to…
As an industry within the personal financial services sector, our customers don’t like us very much. To tell you the truth, I don’t blame them.; The SAME PRODUCT,
A recent Competition Bureau decision favoring “insurer preferred bodyshops” has provided auto property and casualty insurance companies with much needed ammunition in a pending court battle with the City of Toronto to overrule a longstanding by-law prohibiting the establishment of…
The recent acquisition of insurance wholesale broker KMS Insurance by consolidator The Hub Group emphasizes the change consolidation is bringing about throughout the broker distribution channel. Wholesale brokers and managing general agents have been brought into the market fray of soft rates and the eternal drive for cost-efficiency. Is there a future for this particular breed of broker — most of the players believe so, but each appears to be taking a different course.
Canada is big business — amounting to some $17 billion each year. And, although Canada’s money recycling black market is minor in global terms (which the U.N. estimates to be $1 trillion worldwide), there are weaknesses in the current financial…
Last June the federal government released its white paper on financial services regulation. While the gist of the paper was very much in favor of protecting the existing rights of members of the property and casualty insurance industry, contained within…
Donald Alexander, senior vice president of Guy Carpenter & Company Ltd. (Canada). My instincts tell me that the reinsurance market is under-priced. Rating models strongly indicate that market prices are below what they should be. This is not surprising, given…
Since reforms in the mid-1990s, more and more corporate capital is flowing into Lloyd’s of London — much of it from some of the world’s most noted reinsurers. Could this injection of new capital forge the rebirth of the world’s most unique insurance market?
Monday, September 20 Plenary session at 8:30am examining Swiss Air Flight 111 which crashed off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. How did the government of Nova Scotia deal with this terrible tragedy and what lessons can be learned? Government…
The property and casualty insurance industry in North America will have to come to grips with the growth in e-commerce — in terms of client demands for cover as well as managing their own exposures to the Internet, a national…