Countdown to CatIQ Connect’s Catastrophes: 2020 Review, 2021 Preview Webinar

Toronto (January 4, 2021) – Looking back, 2020 will go into the history books as both one-of-a-kind and the same old, same old. While a global pandemic paused many aspects of our lives, catastrophes gave us no reprieve. Natural catastrophe records were broken globally, including some right in our backyard. Though 2020 was a year of exceptions in many ways, it falls right in line with the past decade when it comes to Canada’s increasing trend of annual catastrophic loss.

Canadian insured losses from catastrophic events in 2020 were nearly CAN $2.5 billion – CatIQ 

The years where annual catastrophic insured losses were below $1 billion seem to be a thing of the past; 2020 went one further and surpassed $2 billion in the first half of the year. The two largest events occurred in the second quarter. The Fort McMurray ice jam resulted in a 1 in 100-year flood event and caused a staggering $562 million of insured loss in the spring, and the June 13th Calgary hailstorm which pelted areas of the northeast with tennis ball-sized hail became the costliest hailstorm on record for Canada at $1.3 billion. These catastrophic events, which directly impact the public, require industry, academia and government to work together before, during and afterwards. In addition to its role as Canada’s loss and exposure indices provider, Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ), in partnership with MSA Research, organizes a conference to foster such collaboration in Canada.  

CatIQ Connect, is a content-driven forum geared toward: 

  • Insurance/Reinsurance/Risk Transfer Professionals 
  • All Levels of Government 
  • Engineers/Restoration contractors
  • Academia/Researchers 
  • Risk Managers 
  • Other sectors/organizations dealing with resilience to catastrophes 

Session topics: 

  • 2020 ‘Catastrophes in Review’ by CatIQ
  • State of the Industry
    • Peter Askew, President & CEO, Guy Carpenter
    • Paul MacDonald, EVP, Personal Insurance, Economical Insurance
    • Monica Ningen, President & CEO, Canada and English Caribbean, Swiss Re
    • Moderated by Paul Kovacs, Executive Director, ICLR
  • The Future of Claims Adjusting
    • Bill Dietz, President Paul Davis Canada
    • Skip McHardy, EVP, CRU Group
    • Moderated by Christopher Bartlett, President of the CIAA and Supervisor – National Claims Management Centre, Crawford and Company
  • Impacts of the Supply Chain on the Insurance Industry
    • Darilyn Dorosz, General Manager, PDR Hail Team
    • Jim Gibb, Vice President, Installation Services, Peak Services
    • Ian McKay, AVP, National Accounts, Insurance Company Solutions, Verisk
    • Colin Young, AVP, JS Held
    • Moderated by Elizabeth Kepes, Claims Corporate Vendor Manager, RSA Insurance Group

With the in-person event, typically held in February each year, being suspended for 2021, CatIQ has developed a series of quarterly webinars to focus on top-of-mind themes for all CAT stakeholders. More than 330 delegates have participated since October in CatIQ Connect’s online format.

“Climate change is causing increasingly erratic and severe weather patterns across the globe and losses from secondary peril events are forecast to increase. The risk Canada faces from extreme weather is growing and the costs of natural catastrophes are rising,” said Dipika Deol, Swiss Re’s Head of Underwriting for Canada and English Caribbean. “Events like CatIQ Connect bring together all key stakeholders to discuss and develop the solutions that will protect communities against the impact of severe weather and increase resilience across all of Canada.”

Laura Twidle, Managing Director at CatIQ says, “We are happy to have been able to bring together catastrophe experts over the past year. As we all learned, mother nature does not sit back just because there is a pandemic. We must all continue to work together to prepare for a future with increasingly frequent extreme events.”

To learn more about CatIQ Connect, visit https://connect.catiq.com/.