The COVID-19 pandemic has ground the Canadian economy to a standstill. Since mid-March, many businesses across the country have either had to pivot their operations or shut their doors entirely due to government-mandated lockdowns and stay at home orders.
The financial impact of the coronavirus has been huge, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who lack surplus capital to see them through extended economic hardship. Throughout this unprecedented time for Canadian businesses, insurance firms across Canada have been rolling out extensive relief measures for commercial clients and alternative insurance solutions that are more fitting to business needs during the pandemic.
“Early in this crisis, we recognized that customers would face unexpected challenges as the pandemic and subsequent lockdown impacted businesses across Canada,” said Obaid Rahman (pictured), VP, commercial insurance at Economical Insurance – one such P&C insurer to provide pandemic relief measures. “Many Canadian businesses have had to rethink how to safely conduct their business. Across the board, we’re seeing businesses adapt their operations to survive.
“Our team set out to predict the challenges our customers would face and proactively provide support. For example, businesses have had to shift workforces to remote environments. To support these businesses, Economical added coverage for off-premises equipment at no extra charge. This automatically extends existing coverage for customers whose employees take necessary equipment to work off-site to another location, up to a limit of $5,000 per occurrence.”
As well as shifting workforces to remote environments, many SMEs have chosen to pivot their operations in order to survive the new conditions. For example, some manufacturing businesses have re-tooled their facilities and refocused their teams for the production of personal protective equipment (PPE). In doing so, these businesses have changed their risk profile and have required extra support from their insurance partners.
“The commercial team at Economical understands the need for flexible options to help these Canadian businesses, and we adapted our practices to provide modified insurance solutions that allow our customers to maintain the insurance coverage necessary for business continuity,” Rahman told Insurance Business. “For example, we have a distillery [client] that shifted their manufacturing to produce hand sanitizer and support the need in their community. After informing their Economical broker, we adapted their coverage to properly insure their changed operations.
“More commonly than changing what they offer, our business customers have shifted to a delivery model that respects physical distancing. For businesses that now offer delivery as a result of COVID-19, Economical is working with brokers to extend coverage and protect their business against claims arising from the use of non-owned delivery vehicles.”
The biggest challenge, according to Rahman, has been supporting businesses with substantially reduced income – those who have not had the option to adapt their operations and have also experienced a substantial drop in revenue as a result of government lockdown measures. For businesses that have seen a drop of 30% or more in revenue, Economical has offered to adjust business policies mid-term, allowing for a reduction in premium while businesses battle tough financial circumstances.
The P&C insurer also committed to its commercial property customers that no policy will be cancelled during the state of emergency, unless a customer has violated policy conditions. Further, the firm has amended its rating strategy in order to cap and restrict any rate changes in order to provide affordable insurance solutions to Canadian businesses.
Economical Insurance has not been able to offer these pandemic relief measures without the help of its broker partners, whom Rahman describes as “part of the Economical family”. He commented: “Like us, their primary concern has been providing relief measures to their clients. First and foremost, we proactively provided them with clear guidance on the relief measures we’ve made available to commercial customers since the onset of COVID-19. As the pandemic evolves, we remain committed to offering tailored solutions through our valued broker partners.
“We also care about the well-being of our broker partners and, during this challenging time, our teams have remained in close contact with our broker partners to understand how we can help them shift to new ways of working. One of the things that can’t be easily shifted to remote work is physical mail. We’ve proactively digitized document delivery to help ease the volume of mail to our broker partners. In addition, we enhanced our automation and introduced new fast track processes to significantly improve the service standards to our broker partners. In a time of high customer calls and demands, providing faster service has been critical for our brokers.”
