2024 Executive Outlook |Anna McCrindell, Wawanesa Insurance

Anna McCrindell, senior vice president, COO – East, Wawanesa Insurance

This year challenged insurers and our broker partners. Inflation and macroeconomic pressures drove up costs, auto thefts reached new and troublesome levels, and climate change resulted in a devastating wildfire season and severe storms across the country.

These pressures will continue through 2024. Looking ahead, we need to find new ways to work together to prevent and mitigate loss events driving up costs for Canadians. To do this, we can increase collaboration across our economy, including with manufacturers, international suppliers, shippers, and all levels of government. As risk management experts, we can do more to help these sectors of our economy build resilience for Canadians.

Take auto theft, for example. We’re seeing an historic spike in stolen vehicles. Some of the most common vehicles today are also the most easily stolen. To underwrite these risks responsibly, many insurers are forced to adjust rates, increasing costs for people. Although this is necessary in the short term, the long-term answer cannot be to continue to pile onto our members’ household costs. Resolving the problem requires a united effort from many sectors of our economy, focussing on making vehicles more secure. As a mutual, we see this as an important way to help build community resilience.

The same goes for catastrophic (Cat) loss events. We play a critical role in helping to rebuild our members’ lives after a storm, fire or earthquake. At the same time, more collaboration across our economy is needed to prevent and mitigate the impact of these events.

As with many insurers, we’ve invested in our Cat response, including hiring more adjusters, increasing our drone fleet, and streamlining processes to help get the funds available to people into their hands faster. We’re also partnering with industry and communities to build resilience, such as with our Community Wildfire Prevention Grants. Our industry, with the excellent support of the Insurance Bureau of Canada, has played a key role in sharing our risk expertise with governments and increasing awareness of possible Cat events. Canadians will need more of this, especially as it relates to flooding, earthquakes and the extreme weather we know is going to keep coming.

In 2024, let’s work closer together across our economy, and let’s never forget why we do this work — to serve our members and help Canadians protect what matters most.