Insurance Blogs hosted by Canadian Underwriter
Insurance Blogs hosted by Canadian Underwriter
In a recent article, Traci Boland, chair of the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario, commented that ‘the sophistication of technology for rating overland flood could conceivably lead to smaller insurers ending up with a disproportionate share of flood risks’. As…
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When is a flood a flood? In Parker Pad & Printing Ltd. v. Gore Mutual Insurance Company, the plaintiff’s premises in Haliburton, Ontario were flooded during a severe rainfall. The rainfall resulted in large pools of water collecting outside of…
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Brokers are very busy people these days. This is due to all kinds of new insurance products designed to stay on top of consumers’ changing needs. Choice is good for the consumer. It’s good for brokers, too. The wide variety…
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A recent article published in The Guardian about flood governance in the UK got me thinking about the issue here at home. And while I wouldn’t go as far as that article and call the oversight and management of flood…
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After the water receded, things settled down and Alberta politicians began the task of looking at how to prevent a repeat of the 2013 floods, one of the policy tools to emerge was use of voluntary buyouts for those located…
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A major complaint levelled against the insurance industry is that it has failed to provide coverage for consumers who, through no fault of their own, have seen their homes and belongings destroyed by flood. With the announcement by Co-operators that…
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On December 11, the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) rolled out its latest retrofit home to the media. The home in Burlington, Ontario was retrofitted to reduce the risk of basement flooding. ICLR chose Burlington because it was ground…
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On October 10, ICLR held a Friday Forum workshop entitled ‘National Riverine Floodplain Mapping Framework and Advancements in Urban Overland Flood Risk Assessment’, which largely looked at the state of flood mapping in Canada. The workshop was lead by Tim…
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While groundwater figures prominently in riverine and urban flooding and is relatively easy to map, insurers, urban planners, governments and other key stakeholders seldom factor it in when considering flood risk. So says Dr. Cathy Ryan, a hydrogeologist with the…
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It was raining in Oakville, but it was nothing worth writing home about, just a normal run-of-the-mill summer storm. But as soon as I crossed the boundary into Burlington, that changed. I was quite amazed at the experience: after a…
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As a centre of excellence for basement flood risk reduction, ICLR never advises that just a backwater valve will reduce the risk (indeed, we have 20 tips to reduce basement flooding). Yet Canadian insurers have taken to advising insureds to…
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Whenever the subject of overland flood insurance for Canadian homeowners comes up, someone invariably will warn against it by bringing up the spectre of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program. This is somewhat understandable. Insurance premiums for NFIP coverage are…
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If we as an industry are to have any shot at all of reducing the impact of sewer backup and basement flooding, we have to start cutting through the myths, misinformation, exaggeration, conventional wisdom and everything else that is getting…
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Whenever a large natural hazard event takes place and things didn’t quite go as desired (and they seldom do), you can bet that you will hear from certain quarters that the storm/flood/wildfire/earthquake “was just too big, there was nothing we…
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