Terri O'Brien

One of the key issues facing the insurance industry – and the Canadian business landscape – is the unequal gender balance at executive level. In this episode, IB Talk dives into what barriers still persist within the industry to getting more women around P&C executive board tables, how to overcome these challenges, and actionable steps towards a more inclusive future.

What’s on Dec? the Canadian Underwriter podcast. We’re talking about fraud today, and we have Terri O’Brien from Équité Association, who is partnering and, well, basically, not just partnering, but totally integrated with the best insurers in the country to deal with fraud.

Associations such as the UK’s Insurance Fraud Bureau(IFB), Canada’s Équité Association, Singapore’s General Insurance Association (GIA) and others, have joined forces with Shift Technology to optimize their fraud detection strategies.

With the increased commitment of partnership and collaboration across all levels of government and industry organizations, Équité is actively participating in committees, joint intelligence groups, roundtables, and working groups and representing the industry as subject matter experts.

In today’s landscape, where insurance crime has never been more complex, Canadian property and casualty (P&C) insurers are doing more than ever to protect consumers through their strategic partnership with Équité. Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated technologies to commit crimes, making their activity harder to detect and prevent. To stay ahead of this, the industry is working with Équité, who is investing in leading-edge technology to deliver data-driven insights through the first consortium-based intelligence platform, ÉQ Insights.

Insurance crime is at unprecedented levels presently, and as a result, Équité, our members, law enforcement and government agencies have needed to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape this past year. By harnessing the industry’s collective strength through collaboration, Équité Association has been at the centre-point of this change.

Insurance was created to provide a foundation of security, and insurance crime fundamentally undermines this system, compromising that sense of safety and erodes our peace-of-mind. Any intentional activity to commit fraud by making inaccurate claims for financial gain constitutes insurance crime, which is a serious matter and one that has become more pervasive and emboldened in recent years.

Collaboration is our biggest strength and the proof can be seen in the success of Équité Association’s recent ‘Scams Leave Lasting Scars’ campaign. The goal of the campaign was to leverage the momentum we have from combating auto theft to expand awareness to other forms of insurance fraud, focusing on the significant and often devastating human impact of these crimes.

On November 19, we announced the Top 10 Most Stolen Vehicles in Canada of 2023, which revealed the Toyota Highlander as the new number one. The Toyota Highlander is a popular model in Canada, which is globally serviceable and has a high resale value both domestically and internationally so criminals can maximize their profits from the illegal sale.The trends continue to be similar to last year with preferences for newer models with nearly all of the vehicles on the national list being 2019 or newer. These vehicles tend to have vulnerabilities that come with keyless ignitions, particularly as they do not come equipped with anti-theft devices aligned to the ULC 338 Anti-theft Standards.

As Canada’s national authority on insurance crime, our achievements demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategy as we continue to protect Canadians, support members, and advance our strategic objectives. We continue to focus on the importance of addressing insurance crime to keep Canadians safe and stemming the flow of funds into organized crime. Équité was at the centre-point of collaboration between the industry, law enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), government, and industry partners. These partnerships saw the success of large-scale projects and the recovery of stolen vehicles, as well as repatriation efforts. As trusted experts, we increased operational efforts to deliver ~$185M in value to the industry.