Making a
social impact

• Being customer driven
• Building the best team
• Creating a leading specialty insurer in North America
• Continuing to excel
• Making a social impact

Helping Canadians adapt to the changing climate

Climate change affects all of us. We are working on all fronts to tackle the challenges of climate change – from research and creating standards, to the development of product design and data exploitation – to build strong, prosperous and resilient communities.

The Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation (Intact Centre) at the University of Waterloo continued to lead the national climate change conversation, establish standards and advise governments on how homes should be built to help Canadians adapt to climate change. The appointment of Dr. Blair Feltmate, head of Intact Centre, to Chair of the Government of Canada’s Expert Panel on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Results, will further boost Intact Centre’s mandate to advance adaptation as a priority in Canada.

The Intact Centre released two significant research reports:

• “When the Big Storms Hit: the Role of Wetlands to Limit Urban and Rural Flood Damage” found that leaving wetlands in their natural state could reduce the cost of flooding by nearly 40 per cent, saving Canadians millions of dollars.
• “Preventing Disaster Before It Strikes: Developing a Canadian Standard for Flood-Resilient Residential Communities”, developed 20 best practices to ensure new communities are built right the first time. The Standards Council of Canada is funding the development of a new Canadian standard to build flood resilient new communities based on this report.

In addition to Intact Financial Corporation’s previous announcement of $4.25 million in funding to establish the Intact Centre, the Intact Foundation is investing another $1 million in partnerships to protect Canadians from the increasing impacts of climate change - in community resiliency action plans, tactical resiliency projects and new, forward looking solutions for climate change impacts. Eight projects were selected in November 2017.

Finding new ways to break the cycle of child poverty

Based on a UNICEF report, Canada ranked 17 out of 29 among wealthy nations for children’s well-being. In 2015, nearly 1.2 million Canadian children lived in a low-income household. We have added a second focus – to tackle child poverty, a significant issue in Canada. We will be funding over $1.3 million in 25 communities nationally, activating community poverty reduction strategies through our partner, United Way.

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Encouraging employee involvement

We have evolved our employee programs to give employees greater choices and make it easy for them to support their communities. Our expanded Employee Giving program, now known as Community Impact, comprises:

• Match for Impact, our donation matching program
• Teams for Impact, our team volunteering program
• Time for Impact, our employee volunteer program
• Skills for Impact, a new program that lets employees use their unique skills and professional abilities to help charities within their regular working hours

So far, some of our employees have used their writing skills to put together Egale Canada Human Rights Trust's first-ever annual report while others have used their knowledge to help test the online portion of the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldier Initiative’s new training course.