OTC commercial insurance brokers for Halifax and Dartmouth bring you the latest story from the CIP Society. The president of the New Brunswick Apartment Owners Association (NBAOA) and Moncton’s fire chief are calling for people who live in multi-unit buildings to get tenants’ insurance after a fire destroyed a 16-unit building in Moncton on Oct. 23, [...]

Although it’s still September, it might seem depressing to start talking about winter right now, but it is just around the corner. For vehicle owners, this means it will be necessary to get ready for winter. Today, we’re going to take a look at emergency car kits and in the coming weeks, we’ll also look [...]

After heavy rains in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, the Insurance Bureau of Canada has advised people affected by the rainfall to check their policies to see if they are covered for the property damage caused by sewer backup and water seepage. Between June 23 and 24, 50 mm of rainfall was recorded over Gatineau, while Ottawa [...]

With summer now upon us, it means many people will be spending more time outdoors, on vacation and at the beach, so it’s important people take steps to prevent themselves from becoming victims of crime. The Halifax Regional Police (HRP) recently posted some excellent tips on this topic. In today’s world of social media, one [...]

The Canadian Council of Insurance Regulators (CCIR), an inter-jurisdictional forum of provincial, territorial and national insurance regulators has been looking at the use of credit-based insurance scores. A credit-based insurance score is different from your traditional (financial) credit score. Both are derived using the information found in a credit report, but they have different mathematical [...]

Auto theft is up in Halifax this year. It’s something we’ve noticed at the OTC office and it’s backed up by police statistics. For the month of May, two cases of stolen vehicles were reported to our office. In one case, the vehicle was returned to a rental lot in Burnside and in the other case, [...]

While it’s already been a wet spring in Nova Scotia, researchers are predicting that it’s going to be an “above normal” hurricane season for the Atlantic basin. For the six-month season beginning June 1, the U.S.-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting there will be: “12 to 18 named storms (winds of 39 [...]

An article that recently appeared on canadianunderwriter.ca made an interesting observation about the insurance industry. “As insurance experts, we come into people’s lives at the worst possible times, and our job is to get them back on their feet,” said Irene Bianchi. She is the senior vice president of RSA Canada. The article was talking [...]

The Nova Scotia government announced a new disaster financial assistance program today to cover uninsured storm damage that was caused between Dec. 12 and Dec. 15, 2010. The program is being cost-shared between the federal government ($1 million) and the province ($2 million) for a total of $3 million. According to a news release from [...]

While this might not qualify as something new, it is interesting. Back in 2009, Elliott Special Risks LP - a  firm which bills itself as “Canada’s leading independent market for specialty commercial insurance” – had a photo contest where it invited people to submit insurance claim photos. Elliott handles commercial insurance, so its preference for the contest [...]