A recent survey is offering some insight into the eyes of insurance brokerages and what they feel are the top concerns of their commerical insurance clients. The survey was done by The Independent, a global coalition of privately owned insurance brokerages and risk management service firms.

Here are some of the more interesting findings:

• 40 per cent of respondents indicated its clients were adding or increasing coverage to deal with emerging risks, such as cyber exposures, political risk and terrorism.
• 47 per cent of respondents said their clients consider natural hazards to be their most significant risk for 2012. Following that, other top concerns included supply chain (42 per cent) and governance/directors and officers liability (27 per cent).

More detailed results for the survey can be accessed here.

When people are doing home renovations, it’s probably not top of mind for them to contact their insurance broker, but it should be, and there are a few reasons why.

One is that people have a contractual obligation to report any changes to their property, such as renovations or additions. By having the most current information, it will help speed up the claims settlement process as well.

Another reason is that because homeowners must insure their home based on what it would cost to rebuild, that amount has to factor in the upgrades one has made over the years, such as finishing a basement or attic.

This is a topic that was discussed in a recent article in the Chronicle Herald. The article quoted Marlene Landry, the manager of consumer and industry relations for the Atlantic region for the Insurance Bureau of Canada. One of the points she touched on was increasing liability coverage when doing renovations or upgrades and used the example of adding a pool to a property.

“Not only do you need to make sure you are following any bylaws in your municipality, but [also] how it can increase your exposure to what you could be sued for,” Landry was quoted as saying.

Continuing with the pool example, she said additional liability would help cover a situation like if the pool split and flood the property next door.

Every year, Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI), the non-profit crown corporation which provides basic auto insurance in Manitoba, releases a list of the top five frauds of the year. Here’s a look at three of the five.

1. A person who wanted his old beater written off for the insurance money arranged for an acquaintance to light it on fire. With a plan hatched, the arsonist bought gas and placed it in empty four-litre milk jugs. With the keys to the vehicle, the arsonist drove to a remote spot and set the vehicle on fire. However, the arsonist spilled gas on himself and set himself on fire in the process. He spent several days in hospital and suffered second-degree burns to 50 cent of his upper body. The arsonist pleaded guilty to one count of arson and received a one-year jail sentence, while the vehicle owner received a 15-month conditional sentence after pleading guilty to one count of arson. He withdrew his auto theft claim.

2. With repair bills adding up on an older vehicle, a man arranged to have his vehicle stolen and paid a thief to do it. As the thief drove the vehicle, the thief crashed the car into a tree. It turns out the thief didn’t know how to drive a standard and lost control while changing gears. The vehicle owner was fined $1,200 and ordered to repay $2,700 to MPI after being found guilty of public mischief and fraud under $5,000. The news release does not indicate what happened to the thief.

3. A man’s vehicle was written off after colliding with a deer near Thunder Bay. The man provided a Winnipeg address as his place of residence, explaining that while he worked in Thunder Bay, he returned home to Winnipeg on weekends. (According to Google Maps, the distance between the two places is about 800 km’s, which works out to a nine-hour drive.) During the investigation, officials learned the man’s wife worked in Thunder Bay and her Facebook page had numerous photos and references to their life in Thunder Bay. Officials also learned there wasn’t any record of the man residing at the Winnipeg address he had given. Not surprisingly, the $12,000 claim was denied because of the man’s permanent residence in Thunder Bay.

It’s too bad a list like this wasn’t done for Nova Scotia.

Simply put, telematics is a 21st century approach to pricing auto insurance which involves using technology to more accurately assess someone’s risk level. This is achieved through installing a device in the vehicle which tracks things such as mileage driven, the time of day one drives, speed and the frequency at which one makes sudden stops. Using this data, insurers are able to more accurately price your risk.

For the auto insurance consumer, this means you can save money. Progressive - a U.S.-based insurer which has a telematics program called Snapshot - puts it this way on its website: “People who drive less, in safer ways and during safer times of day could get a discount anywhere up to 30 per cent.”

On the flip side, can rates go up? Progressive says no. Is that the case for all insurers? Probably not.

Telematics is most frequently referred to by other terms, including pay as you drive (PAYD), pay how you drive (PHYD) and usage-based insurance (UBI).

According to a report by Celent, a global research and consulting firm, over 50 per cent of the top 20 property and casualty insurers in the United Kingdom and the United States have telematics programs in place. (Equivalent statistics for Canada could not be found.) Celent expects the use of telematics will become mainstream as technology costs decrease and privacy concerns fall.

Drunk driving continues to be a problem across Canada.

In fact, for the past 15 years, alcohol has been a factor in about 26 to 35 per cent of road deaths, says the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF).

TIRF is a Canadian road safety research institute.

In a recent news release, TIRF pointed out there is some encouraging news that doesn’t get much attention: the number of Canadians who died in traffic crashes involving a drinking driver is on the decline. From 1995 to 2009, the number has dropped from 1,296 to 714, which works out to a decrease of almost 45 per cent.

“So while the number of persons killed in crashes involving a drinking driver remains unacceptable, the problem is getting smaller,” said the news release.

According to TIRF, impaired driving has consistently ranked as the number one road safety concern for more than 80 per cent of Canadians over the past decade. However, in 2010 it was surpassed for the first time by texting and driving.

In our next blog posting, we’ll take a look at more specific data relating to Atlantic Canada. With a little work, I’ll dig up some data that is more specific to jurisdictions like Halifax, Dartmouth and Nova Scotia for a future post.

In our last post, we looked at an annual list put out by the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) which looks at the top 10 most stolen vehicles in Canada. Because of the way the data was presented, it was impossible to break that down further and look at what the results would be for specific jurisdictions like Halifax, Dartmouth and Nova Scotia.

With that being said, the IBC does have some related data of interest for the Atlantic region. The data looks at the theft frequency of the 10 most stolen vehicles with model years between 1998 and 2010.

The data is pretty straightforward, but it’s important to note that the frequency value is actually an index. A value of 100 means the theft frequency is average, so a value of less than 100 is desirable.

In other words, a value of 150 means the theft frequency is 50 per cent above average, while a value of 75 means the theft frequency is 25 per cent below average.

Here are the IBC’s findings:

It’s a list you don’t want to find your vehicle on. Every year, the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) releases a list of the top 10 most stolen vehicles in Canada.

Because the results are not broken down by geographical region, it’s impossible to say what the results would be for vehicles in Halifax and Nova Scotia. Regardless, here are the IBC’s latest findings:

1. 2009 Toyota Venza 4-door
2. 1999 Honda Civic SiR 2-door
3. 2000 Honda Civic SiR 2-door
4. 2006 Ford F350 Pickup Truck 4WD
5. 2002 Cadillac Escalade EXT 4-door AWD
6. 2006 Chevrolet TrailBlazer SS 4-door 4WD
7. 2007 Ford F350 Pickup Truck 4WD
8. 2001 Pontiac Aztek 4-door AWD
9. 1998 Acura Integra 2-door
10. 1999 Acura Integra 2-door

In a future posting, we will look at some IBC statistics which look at vehicle theft in the Atlantic region for 1998 to 2010 model vehicles and what the most popular ones are.

In its column in the latest issue of The Weekly News, the RCMP talked about the “major issue” that copper wire theft has become in HRM and across Nova Scotia. According to the column, there have been over 100 incidents in HRM since the start of the year, while provincially, there have been over 400 complaints since October 2009.

In a previous post, we talked about the theft of copper wire and how it was affecting homeowners. In its column, the RCMP is looking more at the thefts taking place at construction sites when nobody is around. For this reason, the police are asking for the public’s help in keeping an eye on anything unusual that is happening on or near a construction site. The RCMP says providing key pieces of information such as a vehicle description and licence plate number are crucial to the success of finding and prosecuting the thieves.

The article goes on to say that light poles have also become popular targets for the copper wire they have in them. Recently, $15,000 worth of copper was stolen from light poles located near exit 5A on Highway 102. Not surprisingly, the damage caused to the light poles was more costly than the value of the copper the poles contained. There have also been other recent incidents in the Aerotech Park and Dartmouth Crossing. Once again, the police are asking for the public’s help to watch for suspicious behaviour and relate any information they can to police.

The numbers aren’t pretty. According to new research by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada (CGA-Canada), the cost of workplace fraud on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Canada in 2010 is conservatively estimated at $3.2 billion.

The research found 26 per cent of SMEs were victims of workplace fraud. The findings were based on a random national survey sample of 802 companies who had fewer than 500 employees.

According to the report, the most common types of workplace fraud were “misappropriation of inventory or assets, followed by misappriation of cash,” says a  summary of the report.

In terms of the geographical prevalence of workplace fraud in SMEs, British Columbia (37 per cent) and Ontario (31 per cent) were tops, while Quebec was the lowest (16 per cent). Unfortunately, the report does not state what the rate of workplace fraud was for Nova Scotia or any of the other Atlantic provinces.

SMEs play a huge role in the Canadian economy and account for some 1.14 million Canadian businesses (or about 99.7 per cent of all businesses with employees working in Canada) and employ 6.8 million Canadians.

According to new research by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), the odds of being injured in a car crash in a hybrid are 25 per cent less than getting into a crash in a non-hybrid vehicle.

The HLDI – which is an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety – found the big reason for this finding was weight.

“Weight is a big factor,” said Matt Moore in a news release. He is the author of the report and the vice president of HLDI. “Hybrids on average are 10 per cent heavier than their standard counterparts. This extra mass gives them an advantage in crashes that their conventional twins don’t have.”

The reason hybrids weigh more is that they have the added weight of battery packs and other components which are used in dual-power systems.

Moore said other factors such as how, when and by whom hybrids are driven may also be part of the reason.

The news relase goes on to explain how crash physics work, noting that in a crash where the vehicles have different sizes and weights, the bigger, heavier vehicle has the advantage because it will “push the smaller, lighter one backward on impact. This means less force on people in the heavier vehicle and more on the people in the lighter one. Greater force means greater risk, so people in the smaller, lighter vehicle are more likely to be injured.”