Ontario brokerage Mitchell & Whale is allowing its staff to return to the office in any way they choose, a hybrid work model inspired by the 1998 best-selling book, Who Moved My Cheese? Authored by Dr. Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? is a business parable featuring two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two small […]
By David Gambrill | July 21, 2021
4 min read
With a large number of employees working from home during the pandemic, commercial clients need some way of assigning a risk score to the cyber exposure posed by their users, software applications, and hardware devices, a Canadian information technology security expert suggests. “In this day and age, many organizations are using SaaS [software as a […]
By Greg Meckbach | July 9, 2021
2 min read
Canadian courts have the power to try and shut down unlicensed brokers’ Internet sites, though there does not seem to be a simple, sure-fire way to guarantee that Canadians won’t find a fake broker on the web. Teksavvy Solutions Inc. v. Bell Media Inc., a unanimous ruling released May 26 by the Federal Court of […]
By Greg Meckbach | July 8, 2021
6 min read
Nova Scotia motorists could be out of luck when they try to renew their auto insurance if they got caught more than once using a hand-held gizmo when they should be paying attention to the road. In a ruling posted June 30, the province’s utility review board approved an application from The Dominion of Canada […]
By Greg Meckbach | July 6, 2021
2 min read
Brokers wanting to take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning need large amounts of data and to hire the correct experts. If a company wants to effectively build and deploy artificial intelligent and machine learning systems, it needs a large data set, Joe McKendrick wrote in The Data Paradox: Artificial Intelligence Needs Data; Data […]
By Greg Meckbach | June 30, 2021
2 min read
A major pain point for gig-economy entrepreneurs is the traditional process of getting commercial coverage, a Vancouver insurtech CEO suggests. “It is tough being a solo entrepreneur, especially now,” said Jeff McCann, CEO Apollo Insurance Solutions Ltd. “These people are busy. They might want to [buy insurance] at ten 0’clock at night when [brokerage and […]
By Greg Meckbach | June 15, 2021
2 min read
Landlords often require their tenants to have insurance coverage as a condition of the leases, but it could be quite a paper chase to keep track of thousands of tenants and their insurance status. Vancouver-based insurtech and managing general agent Apollo Insurance Solutions Ltd. is trying to crack this nut by letting tenants buy insurance […]
By Greg Meckbach | June 9, 2021
2 min read
Comparison website vendor Ratehub Inc. is now operating its own property and casualty insurance brokerage. “When it’s our own sales staff, we have the full insight into close ratios and contact ratios,” said Alyssa Furtado, co-CEO of Ratehub Inc. and co-founder of Ratehub.ca, in a recent interview. Ratehub announced June 1 the launch of its […]
By Greg Meckbach | June 7, 2021
2 min read
Managing general agents who can place small business coverage digitally through the Lloyd’s market are at a competitive advantage over MGAs using traditional paper-based processes, an insurtech CEO suggests. “We are one of the very few MGAs that has straight through-processing at all,” said Jeff McCann, CEO of Apollo Insurance Solutions Ltd., in a recent […]
By Greg Meckbach | May 31, 2021
2 min read
While the insurance industry is hearing a lot of messages these days about the importance of experimenting with new digital technologies — i.e. witness the increased use of terms such as “agility,” “nimble,” “pivoting,” and “failing fast” — a business strategy should guide the digital innovation, industry execs say. Brian Falchuk, managing partner of Insurance […]
By David Gambrill | May 20, 2021
3 min read