INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

WeGoLook, Trillium Partner On Contactless Claims
WeGoLook®, an on-demand workforce solutions provider and subsidiary of Crawford & Company®, is pleased to announce a partnership with Trillium Mutual Insurance to provide a contactless claims solution to better serve customers in Ontario. WeGoLook's self-service application, YouGoLook, offers Trillium customers proactive front-end-assessments, claim investigations and risk assessments for personal, commercial and farm lines. Read more.

Apollo, Trufla Launch Broker Digital Marketing
Apollo Exchange, Canada's largest online insurance marketplace, has partnered with Trufla Technology to offer brokers a suite of digital marketing services combined with immediate eCommerce insurance fulfillment. Read more.

IMS Announces Quick-Start Auto UBI Program
IMS, a leading provider of connected car data solutions, is pleased to announce the availability of a usage-based insurance (UBI) program model for North American insurers that enables the implementation of a mileage-based UBI product in just a matter of weeks. Read more.

Globe & Mail Insurance Trends Report
The insurance sector is responding to the immediate impacts of the global pandemic and looking to an uncertain future. With large numbers of Canadians working from home, many insurers are offering consumers discounted auto insurance premiums to reflect reduced driving, or deferring payments and waiving fees. Read more.

Insurers’ Pandemic Discounts Backfiring
In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout, auto insurers in particular have announced a variety of plans to support their customers, ranging from premium discounts to waived fees and deferred payment options. But these relief measures are not having the desired effect: rather than increasing customer loyalty, they are inciting consumers to shop around for alternative coverage from other insurers, according to a new study from market research company J.D. Power in partnership with Cambridge Mobile Telematics. Read more.

Underlying Risks Exacerbated By Pandemic
“Strategic assumptions” remained the top concern for senior executives in first quarter of 2020 as numerous other risks are set to be exacerbated by the pandemic crisis, in Gartner, Inc.’s latest Emerging Risks Monitor Report. Read more.

Trufla, Wawanesa Launch Real-Time Billing
Trufla Technology and the Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company are pleased to announce the first-ever billing API integration using the truMobile platform, which gives broker partners and customers real-time access to billing information and inquiries through the app and portal. Read more.

FRISS Fraud Detection Add-on for ClaimCenter Now Available in Guidewire Marketplace
FRISS, a global provider of AI-powered fraud and risk solutions for P&C insurance carriers, and Guidewire Software, provider of the industry platform P&C insurers rely upon, have announced the FRISS add-on for Fraud Detection has successfully completed the Ready for Guidewire validation process and is available for download in the Guidewire Marketplace. Read more.

Apollo Launches Bind Online Life Agents Solution
Apollo Exchange and niche specialty insurer Berkley Canada have partnered to offer a bind online Life Agents Errors & Omissions insurance solution on the Apollo Exchange platform. Read more.

Omniscience Launches Life Insurance Automation
Omniscience is pleased to announce a new software suite that will, for the first time, automate life insurance underwriting decision-making by taking into account the many layers of complexity, breadth of data, and need for immediacy that modern providers face. This suite is designed to help accelerate life insurance decisions and integrate requirements impacting the whole company in every result. Read more.

Marketing Technologies Playing Bigger Role
Insurance companies are increasingly leveraging digital marketing technologies (MarTech) across a range of functions beyond customer acquisition, including customer and distributor experience management in processes from new business to claims. In a new report, Novarica explores the full suite of marketing technology solutions that deploy, manage, analyze, and improve digital marketing capabilities for insurance companies across the value chain. Read more.

Bold Penguin Parters To Offer E&S Coverage
Bold Penguin, the commercial insurance platform that operates the world's largest exchange, is announcing a partnership with Markel Specialty and its excess and surplus products, to expand commercial offerings on the Bold Penguin Exchange to include excess and surplus (E&S) coverage. This is the first time both standard commercial and E&S commercial options will be available on a single platform. Read more.

CSIO Hosts First INNOTECH Sessions
CSIO was pleased to virtually host the first sessions for the INNOTECH Claims and Billing Working Groups. The purpose of these sessions was for each working group to identify improvement scenarios in the claims and billing customer journeys that is of most value to brokers and insurers, and start defining the detailed business requirements for these scenarios. Read more.

IBM Announces The Quantum Challenge
As we approach the fourth anniversary of the IBM Quantum Experience, we invite you to celebrate with us by completing a challenge with four exercises. Whether you are already a member of the community or this challenge is your first quantum experiment, these four exercises will improve your understanding of quantum circuits. Read more.

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In the InsurTech Spotlight this week:

Player’s Health
Player's Health is a Risk Management Services firm that provides specialized risk assessment, risk prevention & mitigation and risk transfer solutions to the sport, recreation, leisure and fitness sector. Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.

We asked some of the Young Insurance Professionals of Toronto for their outlook on the industry...

Q: How are young people changing the work force and what impact will it have on companies?

A: The Millennial mindset is creating movements throughout society. The next generation of leaders are engaged in social consciousness in all aspects of their life, which is affecting product delivery and service offerings within the insurance industry. With the support of Big Data, social media/networks and myriad technology advancements, our industry is now more adaptive and responsive that it has ever been. I believe the insurance industry has always been a pillar stabilizing society, and the picture now becomes even brighter, with young people looking to move the dial forward in achieving holistic work environments and customer-centric product offerings which reflect their generation's values of sustainability and social responsibility.

From Doug The Canadian response to the pandemic has not changed: stay at home, and keep your distance. But the shape of it certainly has: testing is up, but not where it needs to be; belatedly the focus is on the vulnerable in long-term care facilities, seniors' residences, and shelters. Some areas are taking their first steps to ease lockdown restrictions, but few expect a rapid emergence; many fear a second wave of infections, as we have seen elsewhere. There seems to be a consensus that insurance will accelerate its digital transformation due to the coronavirus, but will the rate of innovation change? Since the beginning of the InsurTech movement, the pace of innovation has been dramatically faster than before; will the pandemic slow it down? InsurTech has driven significant change in every area of insurance, but it would be wrong to assume things are rosy in the InsurTech sphere. OneEleven, a large tech hub in Toronto, has closed its doors. There is talk of reduced investment, and a few InsurTechs have already disappeared. This raises the question of what the future holds. Will it be InsurTech or COVID-19 that has the greater influence on the future of insurance? Doug Grant, CIP Partner Insurance-Canada.ca