Intact Says Sandy Has ‘Minimal’ Impact on Claims

Intact Financial Corp. (IFC), Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer, said it’s had “minimal” claims from damage related to superstorm Sandy.

“The impact has been quite minimal,” Gilles Gratton, a spokesman, said today in an interview. “We have had a higher volume of calls.”

Parts of Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces were buffeted with high winds and rains from Hurricane Sandy, which hit southern New Jersey yesterday at about 8 p.m. New York time.

Intact, based in Toronto, would have exposure through its insurance business if the storm caused damage in Canada, RBC Capital Markets analyst Andre-Philippe Hardy said yesterday in a note. As many as 150,000 customers in Ontario were without power today after heavy winds and rains knocked out lines.

Bank of Montreal (BMO), which has a reinsurance business, also said the storm has had little impact on Canada’s fourth-biggest bank.

“Based on current estimates of insured industry claims related to Hurricane Sandy, we expect that any impact on BMO would be nominal,” said Paul Deegan, a spokesman for the Toronto-based bank.

To contact the reporter on this story: Doug Alexander in Toronto at dalexander3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net