Canadian carriers, distributors and their solution providers are collaborating in bringing new capabilities to market, introducing product innovations and putting capital to work. Efforts to grow the top line dominate these activities. In the last few months we’ve seen significant activity impacting producer engagement, digital distribution and new product development.
Examples of improving communications with distributors include Foresters implementation of an e-App solution, SGI Canada’s real-time connectivity with its brokers, and Canada Protection Plan offering API integration to an Alexa-powered virtual assistant to connect prospects to a streamlined application process.
Digital distributors are also making an impact — witness this year’s introduction of PolicyAdvisor, a Candian life insurance aggregator with access to 16 Canadian life and health insurers including top players such as Manulife, RBC, IA Financial and Empire. Allset, an insuretech incubated at the NextAI Accelerator in Toronto, is offering tenants insurance sourced from over 10 carriers and leverages advanced analytics to find the best fit coverage with plans to expand product-wise and geographically.
New products are another area of innovation. Allstate Canada launched the Drivewise mobile app that analyzes driving behavior and can offer up to a 30% discount to existing policyholders. Canada Protection Plan introduced a new term life policy that does not require medical underwriting. Personal lines carrier Sonnet brings a new experience and increased engagement to its policyholders with its Sonnet Connect offering, which provides access to discounted services for home, auto and financial management such as connected home provider Hive, CARFAX reports and credit reports from Borrowell.
Multinational carriers, such as AIG, are introducing innovations in Canada before other markets. Last year AIG TravelGuard went to market with an hourly travel accident offering based on Canadian insuretech Jauntin’s micro-insurance platform.
The Canadian insurance industry is innovating at an accelerating pace bringing new practices, products and capabilities to market. Competition among industry players is driving these efforts to be on the cutting edge, test and learn. The global insurance industry needs to watch what is happening in the Great White North.
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