Three quarters of brokerage owners polled in Canadian Underwriter’s 2026 National Broker Survey report they have not invested in artificial intelligence (AI) over the past two years.
As for broker owners currently investing in AI, it’s a mixed bag whether they think it’s strengthening the business, the survey shows. Twenty-three percent of the 30 brokerage owners polled thought AI was “highly beneficial” for the business, whereas another 23% thought it was “not beneficial at all.”
In this year’s annual broker survey, CU included questions for the first time about AI investment and its use in brokerages across the country. The survey heard from 169 brokers, with 32 of them identifying as brokerage owners or principals.
Of the 30 brokerage owners who answered our questions about AI, about half (15) were from smaller brokerages (fewer than 20 employees), 10 were from mid-sized brokerages (21 to 100 employees), and four worked at large brokerages (more than 100 employees).
Eight out of 10 small brokerage owners said they haven’t invested in AI over the past two years. Seventy percent of mid-sized brokerage owners said they had not invested in AI, while half of the four larger brokerages said they had not invested.
Of the brokerage owners who reported investing in AI over the past two years, the vast majority said they’d invested up to $5 million. Only one brokerage owner, at a large brokerage, invested more than $6 million (between $6 million to $10 million) over the past 10 years.
Over half (52%) said they used AI to improve productivity at the brokerage. This would include using AI to streamline occupational tasks such as documentation, marketing or record-keeping.
Thirty-nine percent said they used it to enhance customer service. Examples include automating customer service or using chatbots to answer customer queries.
Tied for the next-most-frequent use of AI, at 22%, were:
expansion of business opportunities (i.e., identifying new clients, segmenting customers, assessing risk or new product creation)
greater profitability opportunities through personalized pricing opportunities, or optimized insurance pricing.
Nine percent said they used AI to detect fraud.
As noted, the jury was out on whether brokerage owners thought AI was strengthening their businesses.
And so, how was it working out for the frontline brokers using AI?
CU asked broker producers if they found any AI investments at the brokerage over the past two years to be beneficial in their work. The numbers suggest a steady climb in the number of producers who found AI beneficial.
Thirty-four percent of 158 producers surveyed in 2026 said they found AI or machine learning “highly beneficial” in their work (i.e., a score of 4 or 5 out of 5.)
That’s up from 25% who said so in 2025, and 21% who gave AI technology a thumbs-up in 2021.
A month after acquiring three brokerages in Ontario and Alberta, BrokerLink has further expanded its presence in those provinces with the acquisition of three more brokerages.
The latest acquisitions involve deals with InsuranceHero.ca and Levitt Insurance Brokers Ltd. in Ontario and Rizk Insurance Services Ltd. in Alberta. All three brokerages joined BrokerLink Mar. 1.
For more than a decade, InsuranceHero.ca has served customers across Ontario with a digital first, customer-driven approach, BrokerLink says in a press release.
“Founded in 2011, the brokerage combines the convenience of online tools with personalized support, streamlining the insurance experience through technology and automation,” BrokerLink says. “Specializing in personal insurance and supporting select commercial sectors, InsuranceHero.ca has continued to grow while staying rooted in its communities and contributing to local initiatives such as the Golf Marathon Sudbury and regional healthcare programs.”
According to its website, InsuranceHero.ca’s select commercial offerings include contractors insurance, beauty and spa insurance, specialty insurance (such as photographers and videographers, and protective security and security guards), sports and fitness insurance, and restaurant & bar insurance, among others.
The other Ontario acquisition involves Levitt Insurance, which was founded in 1990 and built its reputation on delivering tailored personal and commercial insurance solutions across Ontario. The brokerage primarily serves personal insurance customers but also brings strong expertise in contractor and transportation risks, and offers a specialized alarm installer and security services program, BrokerLink reports.
In addition, it provides auto (including Uber or Turo insurance), home, fleet, commercial crime, cyber and travel insurance, among others.
The Levitt Insurance team remains committed to supporting underprivileged children and cultural communities, BrokerLink adds.
In Alberta, Rizk Insurance has served individuals and businesses across Alberta for nearly 30 years. The brokerage, formerly known as Braeside Insurance Services, is known for its customized approach and use of modern digital tools.
The Rizk Insurance team has expertise in commercial sectors, including contracting, professional services, real estate, and small business. Other offerings include high value homes, luxury vehicle insurance, secondary home insurance, motorcycle and boat insurance, among others.
Like the other brokerages, Calgary-based Rizk Insurance is committed to its community, supporting local youth programs, schools and family initiatives that help strengthen the region.
“Each brokerage joining BrokerLink in March brings a strong blend of community-focused service and forward-thinking practices,” Michael Stack, BrokerLink’s vice president of acquisitions, says. “With their deep local roots and shared commitment to innovation, we’re able to meet customers where they are, whether they prefer to connect with us in person, by phone, or online.”
Team members from InsuranceHero.ca, Levitt Insurance, and Rizk Insurance will continue supporting customers in their local communities as part of the BrokerLink team.
Scarborough, Ont.-based William G. Waters Insurance Brokers has supported the Greater Toronto Area and Southern Ontario since 1961, providing multi-generational customers with tailored insurance solutions. The family-run brokerage provides auto, home, commercial and life insurance.
SL Insurance Brokers (Spruceland Insurance Brokers) has offered personalized service to local Albertans for close to 50 years. The brokerage offers a range of specialty and hard-to-place coverages.
With a main office in downtown Oakville, Ont. and branch offices in several other locations, Spriggs Insurance Brokers Limited has been operating in business for more than 50 years. It specializes in personal property and auto, and small business insurance.
As insurers move from digital transformation into the AI era, many are discovering technology alone cannot transform organizations designed for a different era.
The insurance industry is asking increasingly urgent questions about artificial intelligence and the next era of transformation. Years of observing large-scale operational and transformation efforts in insurance reveal a clear pattern: the conversation often begins in the wrong place.
Across boardrooms, the discussion frequently starts with technology. Platforms, data architecture, automation tools, and AI capabilities dominate the agenda.
In some organizations, the dialogue expands to include digital strategy, focusing on customer interfaces, distribution channels, and the digitization of workflows.
Both conversations matter. But they are not the same thing.
What often receives far less attention is something deeper — the structural design of the enterprise itself. The organization’s system of decisions, authority, and workflows ultimately determines whether or not transformation produces real enterprise value.
AI changes the system, not just the tools
Istock.com/Laurence Dutton
In many insurance companies today, the real constraint is not technological capability. Nor is it a lack of experimentation with artificial intelligence, investment in modern platforms, or even awareness of digital opportunity. The deeper challenge begins elsewhere. It begins with operating model clarity and the executive discipline required to redesign it.
Across industries, fewer than 10% of senior executives report their organizations have successfully scaled artificial intelligence across the enterprise. This ambition is widespread, but the organizational systems required to support it are still emerging. To understand why, we need to step back and look at how transformation in insurance has evolved.
Over the past two decades, insurers have moved through successive waves of technological change.
Early automation improved efficiency in transaction-heavy, back-office processes.
The subsequent digital transformation focused on modernizing customer interactions, digitizing operational workflows, and connecting distribution and service channels.
Artificial intelligence represents a fundamentally more structural shift.
Whereas automation improved tasks, and digital transformation modernized interactions, AI begins to influence how decisions themselves are produced across the enterprise.
AI introduces new possibilities for how human expertise and intelligent systems interact across growth functions, underwriting, claims, service, risk management, and financial oversight.
This progression pushes transformation beyond technology adoption toward something deeper; that is, the redesign of enterprise architecture, so that human expertise and intelligent systems work together across the insurance value chain.
In practice, this is where many transformation efforts begin to stall. Not because of technology, but because the underlying system has not been redesigned to support it.
AI’s value: interaction, not isolation
Many insurers are now attempting to enter the AI era while still operating within structures designed for earlier technological cycles.
Historically, insurance organizations were built around functional expertise. Underwriting, claims, service, actuarial, and finance developed as distinct domains, each with deep subject matter knowledge and clearly defined responsibilities.
In the automation and early digital eras, those structures remained largely effective. Technology improved the efficiency of individual functions without fundamentally altering how the enterprise as a whole operated.
However, AI places far greater pressure on the connections between those functions.
AI systems do not simply automate tasks. They interact with decision architectures that span underwriting, claims, service, risk management, and financial oversight. For AI to generate meaningful enterprise value, those decision architectures must be understood in their full enterprise context.
Introducing AI into a workflow is not simply a technical change. Leaders must first clarify the value proposition of the change, the outcomes AI is expected to produce, and how those outcomes affect the broader insurance value chain.
Leaders must understand how AI’s new capabilities interact with upstream and downstream decisions, what data structures are required to support them, and how responsibilities shift across functions.
iStock.com/HudHudPro
Equally important are the human implications. Operational leaders, subject matter experts, technology teams, and executive leadership must align on who defines the problem, who validates the solution, and who ultimately owns the results.
Without that alignment, technology can move forward while the organization itself remains uncertain about how the system is meant to evolve.
This raises a more fundamental question for the insurance industry.
It is not merely a question of how insurers deploy artificial intelligence, but who has the mandate to redesign how the enterprise actually works.
The design of that mandate is rarely simple. It reflects the strategy of the organization, the markets it serves, its capital structure, and its appetite for structural change. In some companies, transformation authority sits within business units. In others, it is coordinated centrally through enterprise leadership.
The model will vary. The discipline required to define it does not.
Transformation becomes an executive discipline
Transformation rarely falters because of technology alone. More often, it stalls when organizations underestimate the discipline required to redesign how decisions, incentives, and authority flow through the system.
Decision-making increasingly depends on the integration of data, workflows, and judgment across multiple parts of the value chain. Structures that once optimized specialization can struggle to support the level of coordination now required by AI.
Across the industry, insurers are experimenting with different structural approaches. Some organizations are moving toward vertically oriented business units with greater end-to-end accountability. Others maintain matrix structures that connect product, function, and market leadership. Still others retain enterprise operating models anchored in centralized capabilities.
Each of these models can succeed when designed thoughtfully. What matters most is whether the organization understands how its chosen structure connects expertise, authority, and decision-making across the system.
AI transformation requires leadership capabilities that many organizations have not yet fully developed — including the ability to translate between technology capability, operational reality, and enterprise value creation.
Technology leaders understand what AI systems can do. Operational leaders understand how underwriting, claims, service, and risk management actually function. Enterprise leadership focuses on capital allocation, growth, and competitive positioning.
But true transformation occurs only when those perspectives converge.
That convergence rarely happens automatically. It requires leaders who can see the architecture of the enterprise system and understand how technology, workflows, authority structures, and human judgment interact to produce outcomes.
Successful organizations will treat transformation as an executive discipline. This means clarifying authority, redesigning operating models, and aligning technology, operations, and strategy around measurable value creation.
Ultimately, artificial intelligence alone will not define the next era of insurance transformation.
It will be defined by leaders who have the clarity, accountability, and discipline to redesign how insurance actually works.
Brokers, are you looking to “keep things moving” at the office while on vacation?
Beware of ‘Frankensigning.’
That’s what it’s called when you copy client signatures from old policy documents and attach them to new, blank application forms. And then you use these pre-signed forms without clients’ consent. Or, a broker simply signs blank documents in advance, and leaves them with junior brokers during an absence from the office.
A B.C. brokerage supervisor learned this the hard way recently, according to a decision released Mar. 16 by the Insurance Council of B.C., the province’s broker regulator.
Christine Lynn Hewitt, a supervisor at her brokerage, was fined $3,000 for leaving pre-signed documents for her junior brokers to use while she was on vacation for several weeks in both December 2021 and January 2023.
One of her Level 1 brokers complained to the regulator that Hewitt instructed her “to copy signatures from existing client files, affix them to new application forms and use the forms without the clients’ consent,” the insurance council stated in its decision. “The complainant referred to this practice as ‘Frankensigning.’
“Council’s investigator was unable to find any documentation, beyond the complainant’s allegations, indicating that the licensee had instructed the complainant or was aware of the practice of affixing existing client signatures from old insurance forms to new ones.”
In an initial interview with council investigators, Hewitt said “she had no knowledge that client signatures had been copied and pasted and she denied instructing licensees to conduct themselves in this manner,” council’s decision reads.
Later, in a meeting with the council’s discipline committee, the broker “admitted that on one vacation in December 2021, she had left six pre-signed forms in the [brokerage] for convenience while she was on vacation, so that the forms could be signed if her electronic signature was not available or if no other insurance agents within other branches of the agency were available.”
It is not clear in the decision if the broker included her own signature on the pre-signed forms, or whether they were client signatures.
Hewitt told council she did this to “keep things moving…quotes needed to be done, clients needed to be emailed, called, confirmed” while she was away, as the council decision quotes her saying.
Council found Hewitt met the standard of supervision expected of managers while they were working remotely. She was available for calls daily during her vacation, and was answering emails from her Level 1 brokers.
But council found the practice of leaving blank, pre-signed application forms to be worthy of sanction.
It found no evidence that clients had actually suffered harm. However, the potential for harm was real, council said. For example, in one instance the complainant alleged she was instructed to use a pre-signed form required by a client’s insurer.
“The insurer required a signed acknowledgment in writing from the clients stating that they were aware that any refund cheque that may be owed under the policy would be made payable to the owners of the strata plan,” council’s decision reads. “As the strata did not have its own bank account, this would pose an issue if the clients tried to cash a cheque made out to the strata.
“As such, the insurer required written acknowledgment that the clients were aware of this potential issue for the policy’s 2023-2024 term.”
Elsewhere in its decision, council noted Level 1 broker salespersons are not authorized to sign insurance contracts, and that all policies must be reviewed by an insurance agent.
“By using pre-signed forms, the insurer would believe that the [broker] had reviewed the risk and recommended the submission,” council ruled. “Council found this practice to be an egregious misrepresentation to the insurer and determined that this practice is unacceptable under any circumstances.”
Council ultimately ruled the broker “knew that leaving pre-signed forms for new insurance policies was wrong,” but disregarded her duties for the sake of convenience.
“Council did not understand why the licensee would leave pre-signed insurance forms, when other insurance agents in other branches could have reviewed the policies while the licensee was on vacation, or when she could have reviewed the policies herself when she was away.”
Canadian property and casualty insurance organizations have done a phenomenal job with formal workplace support programs, but they need to take a closer look at informal culture and ways of training women to take on senior roles, says a WTW executive.
Informal sponsorship and social event networking are equally as important as formal training programs and mentorships, particularly for senior roles, says Alena Kharkavets, head of claims for North America with WTW’s insurance consulting and technology business.
She considers a sponsor somebody who “sticks their neck out” and endorses another person.
“I think a lot of women are being mentored, but don’t necessarily have an advocate who, when decisions are being made, would say, ‘This person is going to be really good.’ That’s what sponsorship is,” Kharkavets explains.
A sponsor can acknowledge any gaps in a female candidate’s senior leadership experience and say how they’re going to be bridged, while insisting she is ready to take the role, Kharkavets says. Sponsorship differs from mentorship, in that mentorship is passive and does not involve endorsement.
“Organizations have an opportunity to be more deliberate in how their senior leadership group thinks about sponsorship, and to what extent they see sponsorship being practised [to promote] women,” Kharkavets says. “I think there are a lot of mentors, but on the sponsorship side, there is an opportunity and it’s really key for you to get at the executive table.”
Cultural considerations
Informal but inclusive social events are also important. “It’s where we get to know each other, trust builds up, and you become the known quantity,” she says. “It’s the fabric of the organization.
“It’s more, ‘Let’s go out for dinner after work as a team.’ They’re not imposed, but it’s part of the culture,” Kharkavets says. “You can really do a diagnostic assessment to what extent your teams have it or not…because without it, the trust is not there.
“Without the trust, no one is willing to stick their neck out…For me, the [talent] pipeline is there and women have ambition. We’re missing out on talent at the top because of this [lack of strong informal connections and sponsorship].”
Kharkavets says companies have made the workplace more inclusive and flexible since the pandemic, and the use of things such as parental leave by men has become more prevalent. But there’s still a lack of progress on the transition back to work, she says.
Pondering whether to leave the workplace temporarily leaves women to wonder, “Is it going to impact my career and is it right to do?” Kharkavets says.
For example, “quite often, when women come back from maternity leave, they have a role at the organization, but they don’t have a role that owns a P&L (profit and loss) typically, because they were away,” she says. “There’s a need for a more deliberate planning for this return to work,” whether a woman chooses to come back part-time or full-time.
“This transition to work, through my conversations with many women over the years, is something very challenging,” Kharkavets says. “I think if organizations are more deliberate about the opportunities when women come back early on, that would be a real big win and remove that uncertainty and the feeling of being in limbo.
“We need to plan better and earlier so that you can have a meaningful role when you come back.”
Some chief information security officers (CISOs) don’t trust cyber insurers because historically it hasn’t felt like a partnership, but there are ways to rebuild trust, says Lindsey Maher, head of global cyber development at CFC.
“It’s common for a CISO to feel insurers reduce their very complex environments to checklists, speak a different language, or show up only at renewal or crisis — and subsequently, CISOs feel judged rather than supported,” Maher tells Canadian Underwriter. “The good news is the industry is shifting: the more we build transparency, context, and collaboration into the relationship, the faster that mistrust disappears.”
This mistrust isn’t new, it’s been there since the earliest days of the product, Maher says. “I entered the market in 2010 and feel fairly certain it predates that.”
It comes from two worlds that grew up separately: security teams built around engineering and threat response, and insurers built around risk transfer.
“For years we didn’t share the same language, the same data, or the same expectations, so CISOs often felt judged rather than supported,” she tells CU. “That legacy still lingers, but it’s changing fast.
“As an industry, we’re finally building the shared understanding and transparency that turns insurance from a checkbox into a genuine partner in resilience.”
There can even be accusations that insurers are just looking for ways not to pay claims. “If you work in cyber insurance, you know the narrative simply isn’t true,” she writes in the post. “We’ve been transparent about our claims acceptance rate (now 99.4%), and we know many of our peers have similar numbers.
“Yet every week, another LinkedIn post goes viral accusing insurers of playing ‘gotcha’ with claims.”
The irony is that CISOs are the very people cyber insurers are trying to protect.
Sources of disconnect
The problem stems from several sources:
Cyber underwriters often pursue some of the toughest security certifications in the world just to speak the same language as CISOs — only to turn around and dictate what their security posture ‘should’ be. “That dynamic breeds tension, not trust,” Maher writes.
CISOs don’t hate controls; they hate when insurers evaluate them in a vacuum. ‘MFA everywhere’ sounds great — unless operational constraints or compensating controls achieve the same outcome. A company can have every control and still get breached, or have fewer controls and remain resilient. When insurers reduce complex environments to checklists, CISOs feel unheard and oversimplified, Maher says.
Cyber policies are complex and when read like legal puzzles, fear of hidden exclusions grows, Maher writes.
Claims can feel like negotiations not lifelines. The initial incident response time is a coveted award of who can respond the fastest and who can mitigate the quickest. “Followed by a lengthy and painful business interruption adjustment process that doesn’t line up.”
To rebuild trust, the insurance industry should shift from ‘checklist underwriting’ to ‘risk-based underwriting,’ Maher writes. “Binary yes/no questionnaires don’t reflect real‑world environments. Underwriting should be a qualitative dialogue — the kind only a human can have, especially in an era where AI threatens to automate everything else, including underwriting.”
The industry should also explain why a control matters and how it affects premiums. By sharing loss data and rewarding improvements, transparency can turn suspicion into collaboration.
“Cyber insurers should be shouting their claims acceptance rates from the rooftops!” Maher writes. “Yet every week, another LinkedIn post goes viral accusing insurers of playing ‘gotcha’ with claims.”
Policies need to be in plain language, rather than legalese, she says. For example, include explicit definitions of what’s meant by ‘as soon as reasonable,’ what constitutes a systemic event, and clear examples of what is and isn’t covered.
It’s also important to highlight the personal liability CISOs face. “Avoiding punitive language and offering clarity around protections can transform insurance from a threat into a safeguard.”
Integrating insurance with security improvements can help. The best insurers already offer bundled or discounted tools, shifting insurance from a passive risk transfer mechanism to an active security accelerator.
“For SMEs, this can be the reason they buy cyber insurance full stop,” writes Maher. “For CISOs at larger companies, it’s the way they differentiate between who they place their business with.”
She says cyber insurance and cybersecurity are two halves of the same mission: protecting organizations from existential digital threats.
“Yet somewhere along the way, we allowed miscommunication, complexity, and misaligned incentives to fracture that relationship…Something is fundamentally wrong if the very people we’re trying to protect feel alienated from us.
“And something powerful can happen when we fix that.”
McDougall Insurance Brokers Ltd. has acquired Stoney Creek, Ont.-based brokerage Annex Insurance Group Inc. The transaction took place through McDougall’s subsidiary, Duliban Insurance Brokers Ltd., and is the Pelham, Ont.-based firm’s first transaction since it joined McDougall last June.
“The Duliban team is thrilled to be joining forces with Annex Insurance,” says Jason Duliban, president of Duliban Insurance, in a press release. “This deal reflects our long-term growth strategy and strengthens our ability to enhance our commercial expertise while maintaining the relationship-driven approach both firms tremendously value.”
The release adds Annex Insurance is well respected for its commercial expertise and strong client relationships, which will bolster Duliban’s commercial offerings in the Niagara and Hamilton regions.
On the property and casualty insurance side, Annex offers commercial coverages, including errors and omissions, directors and officers, builders’ risk, commercial property, boiler and machinery, fleets, cyber, surety and more, according to its website. The brokerage also sells personal home, auto and recreational insurance.
“Duliban and Annex Insurance are each leaders in their geographies, and having the skill of Annex Insurance supported by the scale and efficiency of Duliban and the McDougall group will unquestionably be positive for the clients and staff on both sides of the deal,” Lorne McDougall, vice president of McDougall Insurance, says in the release.
Following the transaction, Annex’s managing director, Joe DelGuzzo, will remain actively involved with the organization, the release says.
“I went into this process thinking of my clients and staff first,” DelGuzzo adds. “I’m very excited to apply the scale and resources of Duliban and McDougall to assist and further the interests of my clients and staff.”
A widening Middle East conflict has created massive delays in the artery through which 20% of the world’s oil supply moves. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has declared “not one litre of oil,” will transit the Strait of Hormuz.
Since the Feb. 28 start of U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran, the Strait has been described last week as a “parking lot” by one RBC expert as tankers fearing attacks are trapped there. The stoppage is driving up oil and gas prices globally.
On March 3, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) proposed a plan to provide political risk insurance and other financial guarantees for ships moving through the Straight. The agency, which invests in companies and projects overseas, issued a notice saying it “is ready to mobilize its Political Risk Insurance and Guaranty products to stabilize international commerce and support American and allied businesses operating in the Middle East [during the conflict].”
But that might not succeed in clearing the waterway, says a report from Marcos Alvarez and Elizabeth Rudman, both managing directors for global financial institution ratings at Morningstar DBRS.
“We believe that government-provided primary insurance may have limited success in clearing the current shipping backlog,” say their report. “The principal constraint facing shipowners is not only insurance availability but also the heightened navigation risks in the region. Missile attacks, drone strikes, and vessel damage have materially increased the probability of loss.
“Insurance alone does not materially reduce the operational risk faced by crews and vessels.”
An offer of U.S. naval escorts for ships transiting the region is part of DFC’s proposal, aimed at getting energy flowing and restoring confidence to shipping companies and vessel owners. And the DFC “would either insure directly or reinsure private insurers,” the ratings agency says. To do that, it would use the 1936 U.S. Merchant Marine Act which allows issuing of war risk insurance and reinsurance.
Military activity around the Strait has led to marine insurers withdrawing or suspending war risk coverage for ships currently in the Persian Gulf. The situation heightens a range of risks for marine shippers, Alvarez and Rudman note, including loss of life, destruction of shipping assets and environmental liability.
But the ongoing danger may mean any government-backed coverage won’t make the difference for many ship owners. Further, there may be skepticism about the capacity of naval escorts to meet the traffic volume.
“Even if convoy systems are implemented, naval resources could restrict throughput and impose slow transit times, limiting the program’s ability to quickly reduce the number of ships waiting to cross the strait,” the commentary notes.
What’s more, the presence of “government insurance could displace private marine insurers, potentially weakening market-based pricing and risk management.”
Instead, Alvarez and Rudman say, it might be better to create a government reinsurance ‘backstop’ to private marine insurers. A similar framework was created after 9-11 under the U.S. Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.
That arrangement did not provide direct primary insurance. Instead, it backstopped private insurers by sharing risk once losses hit a specified threshold.
“This structure preserves the role of private insurers in underwriting and pricing risk while ensuring that coverage remains available during periods of extreme uncertainty,” Alvarez and Rudman say.
Under those circumstances, the report says, private insurers and ‘protection and indemnity clubs’ would continue to underwrite voyages through the Persian Gulf and “maintain underwriting discipline, maintain a proven claims management process, and preserve market capacity.”
“There’s probably going to be more leasing of these vehicles, which then brings up…a separate auto policy for short-term leasing,” he says.
If EV leasing proves more popular than outright ownership, he adds, it’s possible a recent Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario rule allowing pilot programs for selling auto insurance at the dealership level could spur some vehicle retailers to dip a toe into insurance.
Tesla, for example, is known for using an embedded insurance strategy. So, if other makers follow suit, the timing could be right for more insurance products being sold alongside vehicles at car dealerships.
“I think that will also help drive more uptake down the road for these types of automobiles [if the] insurance is embedded into the purchase process,” says D’Souza.
Greater EV uptake could also impact auto underwriting, he adds, noting most insurers in Canada rely on the Canadian Loss Experience Automobile Rating (CLEAR) system to determine premium levels for specific vehicle makes and models. That’s potentially problematic for EV claims data because uptake for those vehicles in Canada has, so far, been gradual.
“In terms of…how the underwriting is going to be done…we don’t have a lot of data on electric vehicles,” he tells CU.
“Where insurers [and] brokers have to play a role is, you’re going to have to look to see how other regions’ [experiences have been] in terms of electric [vehicles] – how the underwriting has been done – and then take it and use it for Canada based on potential claims cost.”
Increased EV sales could also impact auto dealerships, which will need to educate customers about the insurance impacts of EVs, and possibly offer add-on coverages.
“There’s a lot of auto dealership programs across the country [and we could] see more services that those dealers would want to upsell in terms of a warranty type of product,” D’Souza says. Regulators in various provinces are examining how they treat warranty coverages sold at auto dealerships for things like paint scrapes and other cosmetic issues.
Auto retailers will also have to revisit their business-level risk management efforts.
As EV sales rise, car sales lots will have large numbers of batteries that can be fire-prone under certain conditions, inside garages and other parts of their facilities. Insurers will be looking to see if dealerships keep a close eye on loss control.
“It will be…underwritten as an auto dealer [but] there will be more exposure and risk potentially, in terms of these vehicles’ batteries,” he says.
Insurers also will continue to expect auto dealers to maintain longstanding general risk management efforts, like onsite security, including installation and monitoring cameras to prevent vandalism and deter vehicle theft.
Fiscal 2025 was a tale of two markets for Aviva Canada: softer pricing for commercial lines, and firmer rates across personal insurance.
“We see divergence between the market cycles,” Nav Dhillon, CEO of Aviva Canada tells Canadian Underwriter during a media call today.
“On commercial lines, it continues to soften broadly. And we expect that to continue into 2026, with either flattening or declining rates across the board.”
Two factors are driving this, he says. First is increased capacity, which is spurring competition. Second, there’s been “improved loss ratio performance over the last several years, which is a factor in terms of creating additional capacity in the market. We don’t see that changing in 2026.”
In contrast, Dhillon says personal lines “remain a bit weak with Cat-exposed properties, so then upward pressure, with personal auto still at a market level of 100 [combined operating ratio (COR)].” He notes the company is factoring in regulatory reforms coming to both Ontario this summer, and Alberta in Jan. 2027.
“These are things that most insurers are looking at right now across the personal lines portfolio, which we would say would lead to firm pricing into 2026,” he adds.
By the numbers
Aviva Canada’s posted results for fiscal 2025 show a COR of 95.6%. The company credited this to strong underlying results in personal lines that benefited from rate and underwriting actions, along with reduced auto theft and fewer natural catastrophes (NatCats).
Meanwhile, gross written premium (GWP) growth of 2% in fiscal year 2025 was driven by personal lines increases, offset by price softening in commercial lines. Both COR and GWP are presented on an undiscounted basis.
Results for 2025 show Canada General Insurance premiums of approximately $8 billion, with personal lines GWP totalling $5 billion, and commercial lines GWP of $3 billion. Premium growth figures are presented in ‘constant currency’ to account for foreign exchange volatility.
“We saw continued growth of 6% in personal lines driven by pricing actions across auto and property,” the earnings statement notes. “Commercial lines premiums were lower by 5% driven by reduced [global corporate and specialty] volumes, where we exited some unprofitable accounts to maintain discipline.”
Commercial considerations
Expanding on commercial lines pricing, Dhillon says softening took place across many lines, including general liability, and umbrella and excess. “A majority of mid-market segments, and even key specialty segments such as D&O and cyber, have seen some of the sharpest reductions, here and globally,” he adds.
Expanded capacity, and resulting competition, have been driving prices down and stronger rate reductions are being observed in the large corporate space, as opposed to the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) and micro-SME spaces.
Both new market entrants and existing insurers are deploying more capital into the Canadian market. “It’s just generally part of the market cycle that happens after a hard market of several years,” Dhillon says.
Meanwhile, slowing natural catastrophe severity during 2025 is solidifying the view that 2024 was, in fact, an elevated NatCat year for Canada’s entire P&C insurance industry.
“We would say that the lower Cat activity in 2025 benefited the reinsurance market, easing concerns after ’24 and previous years,” Dhillon tells CU.
“When you look at the reinsurance market, the strong results of global reinsurers helped stabilize the Canadian property market subspace, increasing available capacity and contributing to the softer market conditions.
“We as a firm took advantage of this. We obtained all the capacity that we want…on our treaties and we feel in a really strong position to capitalize. We’re just laser-focused on making sure that we’ve got our fundamentals – peril pricing and segmentation – right, and we’re deploying that capacity in the right way to ensure that we are pricing risks appropriately.”
This year’s model
Looking to 2026, Aviva Canada’s earnings statement says it expects to post a “COR approaching 94%, subject to normal weather conditions.”
What facilitates that? Dhillon cites two efforts. First is momentum and focus that’s been expended on guiding the company’s personal auto business “to that sub-95 corridor.” The second is applying that same philosophy to the company’s personal property portfolio.
“We launched a new property model into market earlier this year, and we expect that to guide the business and [make] sure that personal lines business is sustainably performing in that sub-95 range,” he says.
For commercial lines, the objective will be product expansion into the SME space. “SME has been an area of opportunity in Canadian marketplaces that Aviva really hasn’t played meaningfully in,” Dhillon tells CU. “We’re really excited to launch that product to our brokers.”
