Canadian Underwriter

Category: Operations

How segmentation is shaping commercial property softening
Canadian commercial lines continue to soften, but that softening is not uniform. In commercial property, market segmentation is increasingly pronounced in 2026, says Aon’s Spring 2026 Canadian Insurance Market Update.

“Accounts with robust risk management, preferred occupancies, accurate valuations, and limited catastrophe exposure are seeing meaningful rate relief, enhanced wordings, and improved sublimits,” the report says.

“By contrast, properties with adverse loss histories, wood frame or highly combustible construction, complex industrial processes, or significant exposure to key natural perils continue to face tighter terms and elevated scrutiny relative to other segments in the market.”

Underwriters remain focused on severe convective storm, flood, wildfire, earthquake and windstorm, particularly in known Canadian hotspots, the report says. In those Cat-exposed areas, carriers are recalibrating sublimits and increasing deductibles. In some cases, insurers are also applying higher waiting periods or more restrictive terms, even while core all-risks pricing eases.

For clients, Aon says, this segmentation reinforces the value of reinvesting in physical risk improvements, data quality, and valuations now, so that their risk profile moves — or stays — on the preferred side of the market divide.

Aon notes underwriting discipline remains strong in 2026. But it’s expressed through selection, data quality and differentiation rather than across-the-board rate pressure. Insurers are placing heightened emphasis on accurate valuations to address years of construction cost and inflation lag, as well as high quality COPE (Construction, Occupancy, Protection, Exposure) data.

“Demonstrable mitigation such as wildfire defensible space, enhanced flood protections, hail and windstorm measures, robust maintenance programs and resilient building materials, has become a critical differentiator,” the report says.

The softer commercial market gives clients an opportunity to fund these upgrades, Aon says, by deliberately investing a portion of premium savings into:

Updated valuations and improved total insured value and COPE data

Targeted risk engineering and loss prevention projects

Resilience measures, such as flood defences, wildfire hardening, and roof and envelope upgrades

Stronger emergency response and business continuity planning.

Organizations can both unlock better terms today and reduce volatility at the next turn of the cycle. Escalating Cat frequency and severity, persistent inflation in repair and reconstruction costs, and geopolitical and supply chain volatility continue to create uncertainty around long-term loss costs and capital availability, Aon says.

“Even in a softer rating environment, carriers and brokers are leaning more heavily on analytics, catastrophe modelling, and scenario testing to design property programs that are sustainable across cycles.”

Overall, the Canadian commercial property insurance sector remains resilient in 2026, with strong underwriting performance and improved investment income supporting increased capacity and competitive momentum, despite elevated catastrophe losses.

As the year progresses, organizations that deliberately reinvest in their property programs, rather than simply banking short-term savings, will be best positioned, Aon’s report says. “Proactive risk management, improved data, and thoughtful program redesign enable buyers to capture current market benefits while building a more resilient, future-ready insurance and risk financing strategy.”
May 1, 2026
What P&C insurers can expect from OSFI next year
Cyber preparedness features prominently in the supervisory strategy of Canada’s solvency regulator for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) released its Annual Risk Outlook last week. Among its insurance priorities for 2026-27 is “conducting targeted supervisory work on cyber preparedness and third-party risk related to critical outsourced operations.”

Third-party cyber risk remains a concern for Canadian businesses, according to research commissioned by commercial insurer QBE Canada last June.

More than half of Canadian businesses (53%) have experienced a cyber event in the past 12 months, QBE’s study found. Fifty-eight percent of those businesses said the events were supply chain- or vendor-related cyberattacks. QBE Canada’s survey included 400 IT departments in Canadian businesses.

For selected property and casualty insurers, OSFI says it will conduct thematic monitoring of cyber insurance underwriting and the emerging coverage of artificial intelligence.

“For selected insurers, we plan to conduct targeted cyber and technology risk reviews as well as ongoing monitoring of business integration and risk oversight of AI,” the regulator says in the report. “We will continue our intelligence-led cyber resilience testing for large insurers.

“For all insurers, we will review their response to cyber incidents and assess their cyber preparedness.”

Malicious cyber activities remain a “significant and evolving threat” to the financial sector and its critical service partners, OSFI notes in its annual risk outlook.

“Reported incidents demonstrate the growing sophistication of threat actors leveraging advanced and AI-enabled tools, which increase both the speed and scale at which cyber threats can materialize,” the regulator says. “Software vulnerabilities in common and required technology are expected to remain the most persistent and high-impact technology risk.”

For 2026-27, OSFI’s other two insurance priorities include a focus on ensuring carriers maintain resilience and sound risk management by:

evaluating insurers’ responses to market volatility, including oversight of investment, liquidity, and policyholder behaviour risks, and

assessing boards’ effectiveness in overseeing the risk appetite framework and alignment to insurers’ strategy as well as financial and capital plans

Continued resilience

For the insurance industry as whole, OSFI says Canada’s federally regulated insurers continue to demonstrate resilience amid persistent structural and cyclical pressures.

“The operating environment remains characterized by geopolitical uncertainty, elevated integrity and security risks, rapid technological change, and ongoing catastrophe-related losses,” the report says. “Competitive forces are accelerating shifts in operating and distribution models, as well as inorganic growth strategies, contributing to increased execution risks.”

Investment risks also remain elevated, OSFI says, reflecting continued market volatility. “This continues to expose insurers to reinvestment and valuation risk across asset classes. In addition, private market assets are playing a greater role in insurers’ investment portfolios, introducing increased opacity, complexity, and potential illiquidity constraints.”

In particular, P&C insurers face ongoing underwriting pressure, OSFI says. “Claims inflation, particularly in auto insurance, and a softening commercial lines market, test financial and operational soundness.”
April 20, 2026
How brokers are converting prospects into clients

Want those prospects to become paying customers? Get into the weeds.

So say 78% of respondents to this year’s National Broker Survey who indicate ‘engaging in a substantive dialogue about customers’ needs’ has helped them convert prospects into clients over the past two years.

The approach is getting slightly less shiny over time, though. Last year, 80% of survey respondents ranked the tactic Number 1, as did 82% in 2023 and 84% in 2022.

For 2026, men (90%) are more likely to say they get into deep client conversations than women (75%), as are mid-career brokers (85%) with between 16 and 30 years in the business, followed by veterans (83%) with more than 31 years in insurance, and younger brokers (80%) with 16 or fewer years under their belts.

Brokers at large firms (85%) with more than 100 employees also favour the long road to client knowledge, followed by those at mid-sized companies (84%) with 20 to 99 employees, and those at smaller firms (82%) with 20 or fewer people.

“Be genuine and transparent, as much as one can, in the initial and continual interactions with clients,” says one woman respondent who’s newer in the business. “Approach everyone as if you were selling [and] managing a policy to yourself. Treat others as you would treat yourself!”

What’s more, 60% of 2026 respondents say researching a prospect prior to a first meeting is key to converting them into a client. That’s well ahead of the 53% saying the same thing last year, but below 63% in 2024 and 64% in 2023.

Again, men (79%) are more supportive of the tactic, compared with women (44%). And mid-career brokers (71%) are most likely to conduct advanced research, followed by older brokers (61%) and newer entrants (56%) to the business. Those at large firms (69%) are most predisposed to favour the approach.

Related: Newer brokers climb onto the specialization bandwagon

Also less popular than last year is the tactic of tailoring the sales approach to a customer’s age, with 49% favouring the method this year, compared to 55% in 2025 and 56% in 2024.

Women (54%) show a higher preference for the approach than men (46%), as do younger brokers (55%) and those at larger firms (55%). Veteran brokers (49%) are next most likely to say age tailoring helps convert shoppers into buyers, followed by those at mid-career (43%). Those at small firms (48%) and mid-sized firms (47%) are statistically tied in their views about age-specific messaging.

Highlighting credentials or awards, at 16%, is this year’s least popular sales approach, and that’s statistically consistent with responses in the prior four years. Men (18%), newer brokers (19%), veterans (19%) and those at large firms (22%) are most likely to say they employ the tactic.

Investing time

Meanwhile, a related survey question finds brokers saying they’ve become increasingly hands-on with their clients. Eighty-one percent of respondents to this year’s survey say they ‘spend a meaningful amount of time working directly with customers’ as a producer. That’s up from 79% in 2025 and 71% in 2024.

Men (86%) are most likely to say they’re actively work in a producer capacity, compared to women (76%). Newer brokers (86%) are more likely to be hands-on with customers, followed by mid-career brokers (83%) and veterans (69%).

Those at smaller firms are most likely (88%) to say they spend meaningful time with customers, followed closely (87%) by those at large firms, with a significant drop-off (67%) for those at medium-sized firms.

Responding quickly and allocating time after hours also work. Fully 90% of respondents say getting back to clients fast helps seal the deal, and that percentage is consistent with findings over the past five years. And a bit more than half (53%) of respondents say that responding after hours is a key service component that helps move buyers from shopping to buying.

“We find that clients are very appreciative if you respond on a Saturday or in the evening,” says a woman respondent who’s newer to the business in a verbatim response. “But the final decision really depends on premium offered. Even the most exemplary service cannot win you a client if you are unable to offer them competitive pricing.”

Canadian Underwriter’s 2026 National Broker Survey heard from 169 brokers, with 32 identifying as brokerage owners or principals. The survey was conducted in February 2026, with support from Sovereign Insurance.

April 20, 2026
Major credit agency’s views on Canada’s insurance market

Canada’s property and casualty (P&C) insurance market racked up solid financial performance during 2025 compared with the prior year, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence – a branch of credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s.

Key drivers are lower natural catastrophe (NatCat) losses during 2025 following the more than $9 billion insured losses during 2024, which were driven in large part by a series of four storms during the summer of that year.

The Top 15 federally licensed insurers saw their combined ratio drop 4.6 percentage points to 92.4% in 2025, the report adds. The combined ratio (COR) is calculated by adding up incurred losses and operating expenses, and then dividing that number by earned premiums. A number below 100% indicates a profit, while above that number represents a loss.

The ratings agency says the industry’s COR reflects “materially stronger underwriting execution and reduced catastrophe activity,” and that the improvement was most noticeable in property lines, where insurance revenues climbed 7.4%, while expenses fell 14.6% thanks to a normalization of NatCat costs following 2025’s high.

Related: The hidden, truer cost of NatCats in Canada

“Among the 15 largest Canadian P&C insurers reporting to OSFI [Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions], insurance service revenue [which is based on the cost of services provided over a set period] increased by more than 6.5% while expenses declined by 1.9%,” says S&P. “However, structural challenges persist, particularly in Alberta’s auto insurance market where regulatory rate constraints continue to compress margins despite ongoing consolidation efforts across the industry.”

Specifically, it notes the 15 largest federally-licensed insurers who write in Alberta saw a 113.3% gross insurance ratio in 2025, compared to 87.4% in other provinces.

“Persistent rate constraints, including the extension of a 7.5% ‘good driver’ rate cap through 2026, have kept earned premium growth behind claims cost inflation driven by auto theft, weather-driven losses, and rising repair and medical severity,” S&P says.

Related: Insurers still coping with Alberta auto rate-cap consequences

Further, Canada’s largest OSFI-filing firms posted a gross insurance service ratio (which divides total insurance service expenses by total insurance revenue) of 68.8%.

S&P also notes insurer consolidation among larger players, including Definity Financial Corporation’s acquisition of Travelers’ Canadian business and Wawanesa Mutual Insurance’s more recent announcement that it will acquire Everest Insurance of Canada.

“These deals reflect carriers’ strategic view that inorganic growth, scale expansion, and technology leverage are essential paths to building systemic resilience.”

April 16, 2026
Liberty Mutual Canada president takes on additional role
Liberty Mutual Insurance has announced the appointment of Rob Marsh as president of the insurer’s Global Risk Solutions (GRS) North America Specialty division.

Marsh will continue to serve as president and chief agent of Liberty Mutual Canada.

He joined Liberty Mutual in 2011 and has held several key leadership roles since that time. Since 2021, he has led Liberty Mutual Canada, delivering strong growth and profitability while championing innovation and a people-first culture, the insurer says in a press release Tuesday.

“Our Specialty product portfolio is a differentiated strength for Liberty Mutual, anchored in deep expertise, diversified capabilities, and a clear focus on helping clients and brokers navigate complex risk,” says GRS North America president Marc Orloff. “Rob is the right person to build on that foundation, with the experience and leadership to deepen our specialization and accelerate our momentum across North America.”

A Liberty Mutual Insurance spokesperson tells Canadian Underwriter that Marsh “will partner closely across North America to pursue sustainable growth in our portfolio, unlock more seamless delivery of specialty products to existing clients, and build on the strong partnerships in this space.”

Marsh will oversee all areas of retail specialty for North America, the spokesperson says, adding the insurer’s wholesale specialty division is led by Ben Johnson.

The difference between Liberty’s retail specialty lines and wholesale specialty lines involves how the product is distributed. For example, retail specialty lines are distributed through retail brokers, while wholesale lines are distributed through wholesale brokers like MGAs.

Liberty’s specialty lines include cyber, environmental, financial institutions, management liability, marine, mergers and acquisitions, and professional liability.

According to CU’s 2025 Stats Guide, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company is Canada’s 20^th largest private P&C insurer with Total Insurance Revenue in 2024 of more than $952 million.

As a whole, the insurer has more than 40,000 employees in 27 countries and economies, generating more than $50 billion in annual consolidated revenue.

It operates through three strategic business units:

GRS — delivering a full range of comprehensive commercial and specialty insurance, reinsurance and surety solutions to mid-size and large businesses worldwide.

US Retail Markets — providing auto, home, renters and other personal and small commercial lines P&C insurance to individuals and small businesses countrywide.

Liberty Mutual Investments — deploying more than $100 billion of capital globally.
April 16, 2026
Recovery | Why psychological recovery starts with adjusters

The evidence is clear: when injured claimants start to avoid driving, social situations, or physical activity in the days following a motor-vehicle accident (MVA), those patterns can calcify rapidly. And that increases treatment duration, legal involvement, and claims costs.

But the claims industry rarely asks one logical question: who has the best chance of interrupting avoidance before it takes hold?

Answer: It’s not the psychotherapist; it’s the insurance adjuster.

Adjusters are usually the first people claimants talk to after an MVA. That conversation happens within 72 hours of the event, which is precisely the window when a person’s nervous system is most flexible – threat appraisals are still forming, and behavioural patterns aren’t yet set.

Normally, psychologists and therapists don’t enter the picture until weeks or months later, if at all. By then, the window has largely closed.

But the adjuster is there when it matters most.

Importance of early contact

Research shows early social contact after a traumatic event isn’t just a nice to have. It’s one of the strongest predictors of whether a person’s distress will resolve or compound.

A meta-analysis of 68 studies finds post-trauma social support is one of the strongest predictors of whether psychological distress will, or won’t, become entrenched. Warm, normalizing responses from trusted figures immediately after a traumatic event are associated with reduced symptom severity and faster functional recovery. And cold, transactional, or bureaucratic interactions can heighten threat perception and reinforce a sense of helplessness – both of which are predictors of prolonged psychological distress.

Adjusters are not, and shouldn’t try to be, therapists. But their interactions with claimants are not psychologically neutral. Every word choice, every tone, every framing of what happens next either reduces or amplifies the claimant’s distress – and the insurance industry has largely failed to measure the cost implications.

Behavioural signals

When a claimant describes pain, fear about returning to driving, or worry about the future, the adjuster’s response can send a signal about what is normal, what is expected, and what will happen next.

Responses that acknowledge the emotional dimension, even briefly, tell the claimant their experience is expected and manageable. But responses that immediately get into documentation requirements unintentionally tell claimants their emotional experiences are outside the scope of what this process addresses.

The signals adjusters send matter.

Early avoidance stems from how a claimant reads their situation. Do they feel supported and that their situation is manageable? Or do they feel uncertain and threatened?

Research consistently shows people who receive early, normalizing contact after traumatic events are significantly more likely to maintain function, and less likely to avoid returning to their normal, daily tasks.

Related: Recovery | Why avoidance, not trauma severity, can delay motor vehicle accident recovery

Adjusters’ early access to claimants gives them a direct and largely unexplored influence over each of those variables. A one-minute, well-scripted normalizing statement from an adjuster, delivered early and authentically, can meaningfully shift outcomes.

While most adjusters want to help claimants they speak with, they often lack the right script.

This can prompt a default to the claims process’ transactional language, because adjusters’ training teaches them to ask about injuries, document facts, explain next steps, and move on.

This is a training gap.

Fortunately, the required skills are not complex. Adjusters don’t need to become counsellors. They need three things: language that normalizes the emotional response to a collision without dramatizing it, a brief and credible explanation of what early support looks like, and a clear referral pathway when the conversation warrants it. These things are learnable, measurable, and scalable.

Improving claims outcomes

From a claims management perspective, the case for investing in adjuster scripting around early psychological contact is straightforward.

Claims involving unaddressed psychological distress take longer to resolve and are more frequently litigated and expensive. Research measuring actual health and economic costs in MVA insurance claimants find those with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder incur significantly higher total costs than claimants without psychological morbidity.

The cost of not training adjusters in this area manifests in prolonged treatment authorizations that are rarely traced back to their origins.

The insurance industry makes significant investments in physical rehabilitation pathways but has been far slower in investing in the psychological options. But psychological recovery unfolds on its own timeline, and is shaped by the interactions claimants have in the hours and days after impact. Adjusters’ work happens during those early hours after an MVA, but they’re often not equipped to be fully effective.

Repositioning the adjuster’s role does not require an overhaul of claims operations. It requires targeted scripting, brief training, and a clearly defined referral structure for early emotional support. The infrastructure already exists in many organizations, but what’s often missing is the clinical framing to help adjusters understand why what they say during that first call is doing psychological work – whether they know it or not.

Kristin Graham is a Registered Psychotherapist and president of Graham Guidance Inc., which delivers structured early emotional recovery support within auto insurance claims environments.

April 15, 2026
How AI is directing M&A activity in Canada’s P&C industry

Artificial intelligence explains some of the mergers and acquisitions activity in Canada’s property and casualty industry, a member of Swiss Re’s board of directors, Karen Gavan, said in Toronto Tuesday.

“We know this has to be a business of economy of scale,” Gavan replied, when asked about M&A activity in Canada at the reinsurer’s 40th annual Canadian Insurance Outlook Breakfast. “If you’re going to invest in AI to improve your processes, you have to be big. You can’t afford the investment unless you have scale, so absolutely essential.

“[For] the other part of AI, predictive analytics, you’ve got to have data. And the more data, the richer you are, and so you need both. And so it’s absolutely necessary to have consolidation. But I think…overall, it will be positive for the industry.”

Keynote speaker John Dacey, a former Group CFO of Swiss Re, discussed the importance of insurance companies stepping up to invest in AI. After his talk, Gavan made her remarks about AI investment being a driver of M&A activity in Canada. She was later asked about market concentration, to which she replied Canada still has a lot of room for M&A without disrupting choice for consumers.

“Certainly, going down to one or two companies, it’s not ideal,” she said. “But if we can have a good number of consolidated companies in the five to eight range, it will make a stronger industry.

“From a reinsurance perspective, having everyone consolidated, it’s a little tough for us. But I think it’s better for the Canadian industry if there is that consolidation.”

Dacey said Canadian P&C insurers needed to be aware of four main global influences on Canada: AI, energy costs, global inflation and interest rates, and the rise of private credit.

Speaking about AI specifically, Dacey said Canadian insurers should be thinking about investing in AI solutions “yesterday.”

“On the P&C side, [AI] is more clearly having effect as people think that value chain through,” Dacey said. “Removing human bias from underwriting. Making sure that the most recent data gets put, not just into your models, but your pricing. And most importantly, figuring out ways to bring new data that’s never been utilized for underlying commercial risks in particular, personalized risk maybe, into a price environment.”

P&C insurance companies successfully using AI will see two things happen, Dacey said.

“One, they will avoid some of the worst risks,” he said. “Not all of them, you can never avoid all of them. But you can clean up your portfolio before the experience of a loss.

“And you can also figure out a way to shape prices …to get some of the best risks your competitor has in your portfolio.

“And that combination on the margin, improving your combined ratio by a point, maybe two over time, is worth a lot of money.”

Plus, Dacey added, companies will need to use AI’s predictive analytics to help consumers, and also to help the distribution channel serve customers. Because if they do not, the broker distribution channel will develop AI models themselves.

“If you don’t do that on the distribution side, the intermediaries will also be coming out in front of you. And they’ll be directing risks in ways that benefit them, and who’s making the highest commissions.”

April 14, 2026
Newer brokers climb onto the specialization bandwagon

Newer brokers grasp the need to specialize.

Fully 95% of respondents to CU’s 2026 National Broker Survey who have worked in insurance for 16 or fewer years agree with the statement, “Brokers need to become more specialized to withstand changing technology and sales models.”

By comparison, 88% of mid-career professionals with between 16 and 30 years’ experience and 71% of veterans who’ve been in the business for 31 or more years agree specialization is the way forward. When data for all age groups are aggregated, 87% of 2026 respondents agree specialization is needed to ensure future success, compared with 84% in 2025.

Men (91%) lean somewhat more toward specialization than women (85%), and the strategy is most firmly embraced (90%) by those at large firms with 100 or more people, followed by 86% at firms with 20-to-99 employees and 83% of those at companies with fewer than 20 people.

Related: Where brokers find new clients in 2026

Canadian Underwriter’s 2026 National Broker Survey heard from 169 brokers, with 32 identifying as brokerage owners or principals. The survey was conducted in February 2026, with support from Sovereign Insurance.

More consistent with prior years, 80% of 2026 respondents say brokers are successfully communicating their value to consumer and business clients. That ties with the 2025 and 2023 responses, and is statistically similar to the 82% who gave that answer in 2024 – but it is still up from 76% during the tail end of the pandemic era in 2022.

Once again, younger brokers (85%) are more likely to say they clearly state their value proposition, compared to 80% of older brokers and 79% of those at mid-career.

Men (85%) are also more likely to say their clients grasp broker value than women (79%).

Related: What our Broker Survey says about team motivation

Meanwhile, brokers’ optimism levels slip slightly in 2026, with 56% of brokers saying they ‘face more opportunities than threats’ this year. That’s down modestly from 59% agreeing with that statement in 2025 and 61% in 2024.

Men (57%) are more likely to say opportunities outweigh threats than women (51%). Veteran (56%) and newer brokers (55%) are more likely to say they see future opportunities than those at mid-career (50%). And brokers at large firms foresee good prospects (67%) at a higher rate than do those at mid-sized firms (49%) and smaller firms (40%).

Lastly, a bit more than half (54%) of respondents agree with the statement, ‘insurance carriers are striking a fair balance between the interests of carriers and brokers.’ That’s down slightly from 56% last year but still better than 51% in 2024 and 48% in both 2023 and 2022.

Men are significantly less likely (50%) to see harmony between carrier and broker interests than women (63%). Most cynical are veterans (51%) and those at smaller firms (48%), followed by newer brokers (55%) and those at mid-sized firms (51%).

Brokers who are at mid-career (62%) and those at large firms (67%) are most likely to perceive alignment between carrier and broker interests.

April 9, 2026
Yes, broker producers want an ownership stake

Broker producers looking at making career shifts are examining their options a lot harder today than they did even two or three years ago, says industry veteran Randy Carroll, CEO of Ai Insurance Organization.

Carroll says when he started as a producer, he was glad to have a job working for a solid brokerage. He knew that over the next five to ten years if he built a good book of business and customer relationships, maybe there was an opportunity to have an equity discussion or the possibility of gaining a little bit of ownership in the brokerage.

“That conversation has changed so much,” Carroll says during a recent CU What’s on Dec? podcast. “Producers are now looking at, ‘No, I want to make sure that I’ve got my future baked in here. I want to know that I have that option baked in.’”

He says broker producers don’t want to leave themselves at risk of having a conversation with a principal broker or owner “on a chance or an opportunity that might happen.” They want assurances that if they follow a certain path, or achieve a specific goal, they can work their way to the next step.

Consolidation in the broker channel has driven a lot of this shift in career paths, with producer-to-owner models gaining traction. As an example, one broker producer told Carroll, “I’m 51 years old. I don’t want to do this again. This is my last move; I’ve got to make sure it’s a good one.”

Says Carroll: “He wants to make sure that he has something more than a gold watch and a handshake 10 years from now. He wants to make sure that he has a guarantee built in that as long as he meets the following criteria, that that conversation’s not a conversation, it’s a guarantee.”

Ownership options

Brokers’ ownership of a book of business is another important consideration, and brokers should take a hard look at their exit options and how easy it is to move a book of business to a new brokerage. For example, what happens if a broker has some percentage of ownership baked into their contract, but then one party wants to move on?

“[Say]…there’s nothing in that contract that says the brokerage has to help you move that book,” Carroll says. “So…you’ve found yourself a new home but now faced with, ‘Wow, I’ve got a lot of work to do over the next 12 months because, yes, I own that book, but I’ve got no way of transferring that book to this brokerage because that wasn’t negotiated.’”

This is why it’s important to look at what Carroll calls the ‘divorce clause.’

“I always look at it this way — at the end of the day, if a brokerage owner and a broker producer don’t see eye-to-eye and they want to part, they still want to have coffee,” Carroll says. “They still want to sit down and be able to socialize, they want to be able to go to a broker convention and still stop and have a chat and talk to each other.

“So you’ve got to do everything you possibly can to make sure that it’s fair for both parties. A messy divorce isn’t good.”

March 27, 2026
Intact COO talks about M&A preferences for Canada

When considering future mergers and acquisitions (M&A) opportunities in Canada, firms offering insurance product manufacturing and distribution remain “the number one priority” for Intact Financial Corporation, chief operating officer Patrick Barbeau tells a March 25 fireside chat.

That’s “followed closely by global specialty lines. And that means U.S. in particular, but also because of our global capabilities, [the] U.K. and [Ireland] or Canada,” he says during the National Bank of Canada Capital Markets’ 24th Annual Financial Services Conference.

Barbeau says the current M&A environment is more active than in the past 12 to 18 months. “Our approach to M&A has not changed…first it needs to be a good strategic fit,” he says.

“We’re looking for assets that have a very good overlap with what we’re already doing in the geographies [where] we operate. We’re not about trying to plant flags in more geographies…we would look for assets that have a good overlap with the lines of business we’re already in.”

He adds both large and small firms may be reviewed for M&A, and that Intact does many smaller deals, particularly in distribution – citing BrokerLink’s recent deals.

There’s also interest in managing general agents (MGAs) “in the context of specialty lines.”

Referring to Intact’s current balance sheet and excess capital, Barbeau says the company “could deploy around $5 billion in acquisition before issuing shares…we could issue shares on top, but it gives an idea of how much dry powder we have.”

Tech-based drivers

In Canada, he tells the conference, Intact’s been deploying technology with brokers that simplifies the quoting process – allowing them to make more quotes, and do it faster to create larger volumes of new business.

He notes the artificial intelligence (AI) evolution is underway and that companywide, “we’ve implemented more than 600 AI models within our system, at scale and in the operations.” He adds that’s currently creating recurring annual benefits of around $200 million – and the goal is to get to around $500 million by 2030.

First priorities are to deploy AI to improve the loss ratio, and in pricing segmentation and claims. “When we automate decisions and underwriting and claims, we do it with by leveraging the specific and very precise view of the profitability of every policy,” Barbeau says.

The next AI priority is boosting the top line with investments that improve customer journeys. And the remaining priorities are software engineering and efficiency.

Looking at the company’s structural drivers of return on equity (ROE), Barbeau says an evolving mix of business, specifically growth in commercial and specialty lines, has changed Intact’s portfolio over time.

“These lines of business are producing higher ROE on average, not only now but if you look at the longer term. So that’s creating a shift in the business,” he says.

Related: AI disrupted UK’s personal lines distribution. Why Intact exec says it won’t happen in Canada

And, in terms of introducing technologies, he tells the conference AI and pricing sophistication models were initially used in in personal lines. “We’ve been deploying these models into commercial lines and specialty lines – and also outside of Canada – and we see that it’s producing at least the same kind of benefits in improving the combined ratio.

“That’s another reason we think the [company’s] ROE is in a new zone and more structural than cyclical. We don’t really worry about cycle, because our pricing decisions are made at the policy level. Yes, we want to make sure we cover inflation, but then the final decision of writing risk or not is at the policy level. And our underwriters have these indicators on their screen[s]. They know the walk away price.”

March 26, 2026