How Intact is changing its home insurance product 

Intact, Canada’s largest insurer, is now pricing its home insurance product “peril-by-peril.” 

It’s among several pricing sophistication efforts Intact is employing to maintain profitability, Ken Anderson, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Intact Financial Corporation, said in a National Bank Financial fireside chat. 

“We’re now using maps by peril — be it flooding maps, wildfire maps, hail maps — and overlaying those on top of each other as we do our pricing,” Anderson said Wednesday at the Canadian Financial Services Conference in Montreal.  

“So, pricing sophistication is certainly an area that we continue to try to push the boundaries on to maintain the competitive advantage there.” 

Intact is also investing in actuarial science and machine learning to fine-tune its home insurance pricing, says Anderson. 

The company reports making other adjustments to its home insurance policies. “Things like basement limits on basement losses,” he says. “We’ve also tweaked our coverage around roofs for hail, so the depreciated cost of the roof is what the payout is on, as opposed to the new costs of the roof.” 

Anderson says loss prevention is another way to improve pricing, citing Intact’s partnership with [Wildfire Defense Systems]. “In areas…susceptible to wildfires, they’re going out in advance, putting protective covers in place, and lowering, essentially, the risk of embers causing fires and causing full losses,” he explains. 

Last spring, Intact Financial Corporation (IFC) announced its contract with American wildfire risk management company WDS to provide policyholders in Alberta and British Columbia with wildfire loss prevention and suppression services for their homes when threatened by active wildfires. 

“We’ve a few specific examples where we believe they’ve already prevented full-limit losses that would have otherwise occurred,” says Anderson.  

Intact is encouraging customers to engage in loss prevention efforts, he says.  

“We’ve acquired Jiffy, which [offers] home maintenance [services]. As we move forward, we see opportunity to leverage the cross-over between customer engagement and prevention. That’s certainly an area that we’re now working on exploring further.” 

How have these pricing initiatives translated into financial results?

In 2024 Q4, the carrier saw 9% growth in personal property operating direct premiums written (DPW), primarily due to “rates in hard market conditions,” IFC wrote in its Q4 2024 results. The combined ratio in that quarter was particularly strong at 77.1% due to seasonal factors and low catastrophe losses, the insurer says.  

Despite a record-high loss year across the P&C industry last year, due to four back-to-back catastrophes last summer, Intact’s combined ratio remains “in that 90 or just-below 90 zone,” Anderson says.  

Feature image by iStock.com/Jirsak