View the video here on your mobile device. As a personal injury lawyer and partner at McLeish Orlando, Patrick Brown has represented countless accident victims and their families. When the Ontario government first proposed its changes for the province’s auto insurance system, Patrick was serving as President of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association. As such, [...]
Dog bites accounted for more than one-third of all homeowners insurance liability claims paid out in 2009, costing $412 million and up 6.4 percent from 2008, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.). An analysis of homeowners insurance data by the I.I.I. found that the average cost of dog bite claims was $24,840 in 2009, [...]
An Alberta pension manager and a Toronto company are buying the remaining half of the $2-billion Summit industrial property fund from ING Group, which says it’s withdrawing from real estate to focus on banking and insurance. The Amsterdam-based financial giant owns 50 per cent of ING Summit Industrial Fund Limited Partnership outright and 7.8 per [...]
Thousands of young Canadian men and women are embarking on a huge change to their lives in the next few weeks as they leave home and enter university. It’s an exciting and demanding time – as students handle their own finances for the first time and make decisions on money and debt that can haunt [...]
Zurich, one of the largest property and casualty insurers globally and in North America, introduces an enhanced Umbrella Liability Policy. In addition to the existing “Coverage A/Coverage B” form, which blends follow form excess insurance with umbrella coverage, Zurich now offers “Coverage C” Casualty Business Crisis Expense, which covers reputational risks and related issues. Previously [...]
Canadian parents agree that a post-secondary education is important for their children and they feel good about helping to pay the cost. However, according to the TD Canada Trust Education and Finances Survey, there appears to be a gap between what parents want to do and what they might be able to afford. While 87% [...]
Warren Buffett’s company said on August 26 it will offer to buy the roughly 1.4 million shares it doesn’t already own of its subsidiary Wesco Financial Corp., and the news sent Wesco’s stock soaring 12 per cent. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. says it will offer a combination of cash and Class B Berkshire stock to acquire [...]
World Finance, a financial information publisher, has announced the winners of its top global insurers. In Canada, Intact took top spot while Chubb earned the top marks in the United States. In the U.K., Chartis came out on top. The World Finance Awards were created in 2007 to identify industry leaders, individuals, teams and organizations [...]
In its feature “Are Hybrids as Green When it Comes to Their Claims Costs?”, Mitchell International, Inc., a provider of information, workflow and performance management solutions to the Property & Casualty claims and Collision Repair industries, found that hybrid vehicles are a more costly risk for insurers. “Mitchell’s in-depth, multi-year data shows that hybrids have [...]
As a part of SGI’s ongoing traffic safety partnership with the Saskatchewan RCMP, the provincial insurer is outfitting two vehicles with Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems. SGI is providing $50,000 in funding for the project. . “Traffic safety is an important part of SGI’s commitment to making communities safer. ALPR license plate recognition is [...]
Customer satisfaction with auto insurance providers has improved notably from 2009, despite a considerable increase in the proportion of customers whose premiums were raised, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Canadian Auto Insurance Customer Satisfaction Study. The study, now in its third year, measures auto policyholder experiences with their primary insurer. Customer satisfaction [...]
On August 24, Britain’s financial regulator imposed a record fine of 2.275 million pounds (US$3.5 million) on Zurich Insurance PLC for losing confidential data on 46,000 customers. The Financial Services Authority said the security breach – which included the loss of identity information and in some cases details of bank accounts, credit cards and insured [...]
Bollywood actor John Abraham is taking the plunge and doing something no other Indian celebrity has done: he’s insuring his body; his bottom, to be precise. The actor is reportedly insuring his asset for Rs 10 crore (100 million rupees), or about CAD$2.2 million. Indian newspaper Mid-Day said that Indian insurers are not used to [...]
Wherever you live or operate a business in Canada, you can’t escape being taxed, but the amount of tax will vary by province. PricewaterhouseCoopers has released its annual publication, Tax Facts and Figures, which is a reference tool to help understand the personal and corporate tax rates and changes across Canada. Highlights among the provinces: [...]
With predictions for a severe 2010 hurricane season, coastal residents should heed the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina by making sure to have the right type and amount of insurance, according to the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.). August 29 marks the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the most costly insured disaster in United States history, [...]
View the video here on your mobile device. Julie Hawrishok went to Carleton Place, Ontario, a commuter town just west of Ottawa. An estimated four-out-of-five people commute into the city for work, so they spend a lot of time on the road. She asked if they had heard about the upcoming changes to Ontario’s auto [...]
Consumer-reported average annual expenditures on vehicle maintenance and repair services have decreased to $9.8 billion in 2010 from $11.2 billion in 2009, largely due to a significant decline in routine maintenance spending among owners of four- to seven-year-old vehicles, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Canadian Customer Commitment Index Study. The study finds [...]
Tougher capital and liquidity requirements for banks would reduce the frequency and severity of any future global financial crises and the threat they would pose to Canada’s economy, according to a Bank of Canada report. The benefits of revised requirements would far outweigh the short-term costs that banks would likely pass along to consumers as [...]
