Terri O'Brien

The momentum on combatting auto theft in 2024 has already exceeded my expectations. In February, I was honoured to represent Équité Association and the insurance industry twice in Ottawa to speak about the impacts of auto theft on Canadians and the solutions to keep our communities safe. The February 8 National Summit on Combatting Auto Theft was an important step forward to finding collaborative solutions.

In 2023, Équité Association launched the first of its kind for the industry – a national insurance crime detection platform, ÉQ Insights. We know fraud is hidden in insurance claims and can be hard to detect as each individual insurance company can only see the insurance fraud happening within their organization. ÉQ Insights is a tool that brings together industry-wide information in one place for effective fraud detection.

Équité Association specializes in uncovering fraudulent patterns within claims and our investigators guide our insurance industry members to identify, predict and prevent continuing fraud. With the introduction of ÉQ Insights, Équité has built a foundation to detect and prevent insurance crime using predictive analytics and machine learning.

Terri O'Brien is President & CEO of Équité Association, which recently merged the operations of an analytics company and the investigative services division of the Insurance Bureau of Canada. Modelled after the UK's Insurance Fraud Bureau and the National Insurance Crime Bureau in the US, Équité's stated goal is to eradicate insurance fraud in Canada by 2030.

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.