INSURANCE INDUSTRY NEWS

No Respite From Natural Catastrophes In 2025: Willis
Natural catastrophes continue to put a strain on global insurance markets, according to the latest review published by Willis, a WTW business. It has been six years since the insurance industry last experienced a year with low losses from natural catastrophes, with global insured losses from natural catastrophes now consistently exceeding USD 100 billion per year. Read more.

Trust Emerges As Main Barrier To Agentic AI Adoption: Deloitte
Artificial intelligence is projected to become a mainstream finance and accounting tool, according to a recent Deloitte poll. More than 8 in 10 finance and accounting professionals say AI-powered tools such as AI agents and GenAI chatbots could become standard tools for the profession within the next five years. Read more.

QuickFacts Expands Commercial Line with 51 New IRCA Auto Comparisons
Following the successful launch of our Commercial product line, QuickFacts is continuing to build out tools that support commercial brokers with clarity and speed. For the second phase of our Commercial product launch, we're excited to announce the release of 51 IRCA Auto comparisons, now available across our platform with full national coverage. Read more.

DXC Launches AI-Powered Claims Solution For Self-Insured Organizations
DXC Technology, a leading Fortune 500 global technology services provider, is pleased to announce DXC Assure Risk Management, a next-generation solution that unites AI and human expertise to help self-insured organizations better manage employee care, control healthcare costs, and accelerate return-to-work outcomes. Read more.

Guidewire Niseko Release Delivers Risk Insights
Guidewire is pleased to announce Niseko, its latest release, designed to give insurers unprecedented insight into financial performance and risk exposure. Niseko empowers developers with tools that streamline updates to custom software extensions, automate and reuse core business functions to speed development, and enhance operational efficiency through intelligent automation. Read more.

SPGC Rebrand Unites Five MGA Brands
Specialty Program Group Canada is proud to announce our intent to rebrand our Managing General Agency brands – Cansure, Beacon, i3 Underwriting Services, Totten Insurance Group, and Anderson McTague & Associates – under a single, unified national identity: SPG Canada. Read more.

Gallagher Re Releases H1 2025 Natural Catastrophe & Climate Report
Following a very active start to 2025 for natural catastrophe activity in the United States, fewer high-cost events in the rest of the world have kept the first six months of the year manageable for governments and the insurance industry globally. Read more.

Companies Struggle To Meet Rising Demand For Personalized Benefits: Aon Survey
Aon's 2025 Global Benefits Trends Study finds that multinational companies are under mounting pressure to offer personalized, inclusive benefits – yet most lack the governance, tools or frameworks to deliver at scale. Read more.

Westland Acquires Paul Ayotte Insurance Brokers
Westland Insurance, one of Canada's largest insurance brokerages, is pleased to announce that it acquired has Paul Ayotte Insurance Brokers Ltd. (PAIB), effective August 1st. Read more.

US Catastrophes Dominate H1 Global Losses
In the first half of 2025, both overall losses and insured losses from natural disasters were significantly higher than the global average for the previous ten years. Insured losses in H1 2025 were the second-highest in the first half of any year since our records began in 1980. Read more.

Markel To Sell Reinsurance Renewal Rights To Nationwide
Markel Insurance is pleased to announce it has entered into an agreement to sell the renewal rights for its Global Reinsurance business to Nationwide. Transaction terms have not been publicly disclosed. Read more.

Supercharging Employee Productivity: Sun Life GenAI Agent
Sun Life Financial has been recognized for its internally developed GenAI-powered agent, Iris, which uses Agentic AI to improve employee productivity and service desk efficiency. Iris is a secure service desk assistant that delivers instant, conversational responses to common inquiries. Integrated into Sun Life's existing systems, Iris creates a seamless and secure self-service option for employees which frees up service desk agents to focus on more complex cases. Read more.

In the InsurTech Spotlight this week:

Mavro Imaging
Mavro Imaging is a proven leader in developing innovative Forms, Remittance, Lockbox, and Document Imaging solutions. Our system-wide monitoring tools, extensive security features, and end-to-end encryption capability ensure peak efficiency and operational compliance. We maximize ROI by consistently delivering unique technologies.
Learn more.

Calling all InsurTechs! Click here to participate.

Featured job opportunities:

Financial Security Advisor, Insurance
RBC Insurance
Montreal, QC

Underwriter (Commercial Auto)
SGI CANADA
Calgary / Edmonton, AB

From Doug Personal Avatars and AI Agents Years and years ago, when digital “avatars” first entered the public lexicon, around the advent of social media and instant messaging (James Cameron's movie was still just a long-gestating idea), the hype suggested a digital representation would be able to do most anything digital for you. I thought personal AI agents were futuristic technology, still to be developed, until this headline caught my eye: “I Used ChatGPT's New Agent to Buy Tickets to a Baseball Game.” Where an avatar is a digital self-representation – “how you appear” in a digital space – an AI Agent is an autonomous digital assistant that works on your behalf, has memory, reasoning, and the ability to act and is about what gets done for you, is task-oriented, intelligent, but often invisible. An avatar is like a digital mask on your interactions – i.e., you speak through it – while a personal AI Agent can act without you. Putting them together, your AI agent could wear your avatar, speaking on your behalf in meetings or chats – face and mind in combination, a personal digital twin. Doug Grant, CIP Partner Insurance-Canada.ca