Canada’s largest mutual insurer, Beneva, intends to merge with one of Canada’s oldest mutual insurers, Gore Mutual, the companies announced Tuesday.
It’s a merger, not an acquisition, Andy Taylor, president and CEO of Gore Mutual, emphasized in an interview with Canadian Underwriter. He touted the deal as an example of how mutual insurers can achieve scale without the need to demutualize.
“We will set a great example for the mutual industry,” Taylor told CU. “I mean, both of our organizations are strong, they’re exciting, and we’re thinking about how we get stronger. We’re thinking about the future and how to be resilient together. It’s a great message overall and we’re proud to be a part of it.”
The two mutuals will merge under the Beneva brand. The combined operations will have more than 6,100 employees and 3.8 million members and customers. Pending regulatory and policyholders’ approvals, the deal is expected to be completed in early 2026.
As part of the deal, Gore Mutual will merge with Unica Insurance, a Beneva subsidiary and a niche personal and commercial insurer based in Mississauga, Ont., and operate as a standalone Beneva subsidiary outside Quebec.
All told, the merged operations will result in close to $8 billion of total premium for Beneva, including both its life and P&C insurance operations.
On the P&C insurance side, Gore wrote almost $700 million in total insurance revenue in 2023, per MSA Research data published in Canadian Underwriter’s 2024 Stats Guide. Beneva’s P&C operations wrote almost $2.3 billion of total insurance revenue.
“From our lens, the P&C side of it will be about $3 billion of an $8-billion business, and that’s a Top 10 P&C carrier, which was one of our strategic objectives,” Taylor said.
The merger will consolidate Beneva’s ranking as the seventh largest insurer in Canada by total premium, says Beneva president and CEO Jean-Francois Chalifoux. When combined with Gore Mutual, Beneva will become the 10th-largest property and casualty insurer in Canada and continue to be the third-largest property and casualty insurer in Quebec.
Operating as a standalone subsidiary under the Beneva brand allows Gore to continue its 180-year heritage as Canada’s oldest insurance company, Taylor said. It also means Gore retains its presence in Cambridge, Ont., where it is headquartered.
For Chalifoux, the deal allows Beneva to extend its footprint outside Quebec, and into Ontario and western Canada.
“From the get-go, when we created Beneva in 2020, we knew this wasn’t the end game,” Chalifoux told CU. “Back then, we wanted to solidify the place of mutualism in Quebec. But we knew that eventually, we felt there was a place for mutualism across the country…
“We also knew we wanted to grow, not only in Quebec, but in Ontario, Atlantic Canada, and western Canada.”
That’s partly what triggered the merger talks between Beneva and Gore, although the initial discussions were simply about “sharing our stories” as mutuals, Chalifoux said.
“We designed Beneva in such a way that it would be able to welcome other mid-sized mutuals who were facing the same challenges as we were facing back when we made the announcement [about starting Beneva] in 2020,” Chalifoux told CU.
Those 2020 challenges sound very similar to those of 2025, he added with a wry smile in a video call. “When I was speaking to the media five years ago, I was talking about the labour shortage, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts, significant IT expenditures, and compliance requirements,” he said.
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Beneva and Gore both use the Guidewire tech platform, which is one reason why the deal makes sense for Beneva, Taylor said. Unica will be coming onto Gore’s tech platform, and Gore will be the platform for brokers outside of Quebec. Among Gore’s other digital investments over the past few years, the company has also implemented Amazon Connect.
The merger will result in a truly national offering for Beneva, Taylor tells CU.
“Today, we have national programs across the country, but we don’t write in Quebec, and vice versa. So, together we can offer a national solution to our broker partners,” he said.
“Sometimes in a merger, brokers are losing a market. In this case, we think we’re bringing a stronger market to brokers. [That includes] all areas of Beneva’s business model, which is diversified with the life and health and the group [benefits]. It’s a much better offering, so we think that’s a great news story for brokers.”
The merger will present some unique regulatory considerations. For one, a number of approvals will be required, and not just those of the companies’ mutual policyholders, which both companies will be seeking over the next few months.
“It’s a little bit complicated because the current charter of Gore Mutual is federal,” said Chalifoux. “Ours is provincial, so we have to deal with both the AMF [Quebec’s insurance regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers] and OSFI [the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada’s federal solvency regulator], as well as the Competition Bureau…
“And since we’re mutuals, and we’re governed by private bills, so both the Senate of Canada and the National Assembly of Quebec have to put their stamps on this merger.”
Therefore, for the time being, there is no change in the activities of the two organizations and they remain competitors, the companies announced Tuesday.
Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/skynesher
