Canadian property claims are no longer a steady stream – they're arriving in waves that are bigger, more frequent and harder to service, thanks to a mix of climate-driven CAT activity, inflation, labour shortages and denser cities.
That was the picture painted by panellists at a recent CAMGA conference, where Brian Bessey, director of national accounts at ServiceMaster Restore, said the industry needs to rethink how it prepares for and responds to surges in loss activity.
"In the '80s, you'd see zero to three CAT events a year. In the '90s, it was zero to five. In the 2000s, one to seven," Bessey said. "Now, in this decade, we're talking about nine to 24. We had 24 CAT events in 2024."
He noted that a catastrophe loss used to be defined as $25 million and is now pegged at $30 million in CAT-inflated dollars, but the real story is the sheer number of events and the way they cluster. When firms have to mobilise teams at short notice, costs climb fast.
Bessey said that mobilising teams for CAT events – covering travel, accommodation and daily expenses – can push restoration costs up by between 30% and 50% before loss-related expenses are even factored in.
Greater density and more complex construction mean a single event now impacts far more policyholders in a smaller footprint, driving larger scopes of work and extended timelines. Those longer cycle times ripple through the MGA space, affecting customer satisfaction, business interruption, loss of use and reserve uncertainty.
Policyholders have changed, too. Victoria Hanson, director of sales and national TPA head at Crawford Canada, said customers are arriving at claims armed with their own research, AI tools and online resources – and they expect to be guided through the process accordingly.
She described a recent accident and health claim where the claimant had navigated the coverage letter, understood exactly where her appeal stood and could articulate every detail of her case by the time it reached senior review. "I want to go hire her," Hanson joked.
The implication for MGAs, she argued, is that claimants now expect to be treated as informed participants – not passed between parties and forced to repeat themselves.
Sean Forgie, director of growth and development at ClaimsPro, said those expectations are reasonable but require a different mindset. "Customers expect simple, fast, transparent and empathetic claims handling," he said. "Being technically excellent and aggressive or assertive just doesn't cut it anymore."
On larger commercial losses, he said there is growing demand for adjusters with specialist backgrounds – engineering, quantity surveying or building science – so they can engage more credibly with complex risks and sophisticated insureds.
All three panellists converged on a single practical message for MGAs: do more work before the claim arrives.
Forgie recommended pre-loss meetings for larger programmes to agree on adjusters, lawyers, engineers and contractors in advance, and to align on service standards, pricing and CAT response plans. "You don't want to be talking about pricing in the middle of the claim," Bessey added.
Forgie also argued that MGAs have a structural advantage over domestic carriers if they use it. "MGAs can operate almost like a mini Lloyd's” – aggregating specialty risks, building pre-vetted teams and funnelling information back to brokers in real time rather than waiting for an annual review, he said. "Size and agility allow you to be more real-time sensitive."
He also recommended post-settlement debriefs on complex losses as a discipline that few carriers actually follow through on. "If you've really had to wrestle a claim to the ground… bring in the entire adjustment team, vendors included, and do a proper lessons learned," he said. "The lessons you learn add real value and help you manage client expectations on the next one."
