Platforms from Europe and the United States are courting Canadian insurers, which have traditional systems. They are offering them cloud-based technology and artificial intelligence (AI) that will enable them to migrate decades of data accumulated in back-office systems to a new platform.
The trend is global, but the insurance sector in Canada is lagging behind, even though property and casualty insurance has caught up somewhat. In group insurance, the task is colossal due to the complexity of these products. The migration can take several years.
Insurers, both large and small, have rolled up their sleeves. UV Insurance, a mutual insurance company based in Drummondville, Quebec completed the migration of all its group insurance plans to a new member and administrator portal in 2024. The insurer began its technology project in 2018.
For larger companies, the transition can take even longer. In 2017, Manulife began migrating its legacy group insurance claims management systems in Canada. The insurer chose the V3locity platform from US insurtech company Vitech Systems Group. The transition is still ongoing.
“It's for their claims processing, for all their group benefits. They (Manulife) are working towards having all their different groups supported on the platform,” revealed Jill Davidson, General Manager of Canadian Operations at Vitech Systems Group, in an interview with Insurance Portal. Manulife was one of its first customers in Canada.
Davidson says that several Manulife groups have already migrated to V3locity. In Canada, we support a lot of different types of benefits on a single platform…It takes a transition,” she explains regarding the delay. “The ability to use AI to help with that migration of all the existing blocks of business over onto a new platform and keep the cost down and improve the quality of the data when it goes through the system is a key part of the transition,” she adds.
The effort is worth it, according to a press release published by Manulife in the RADAR section of the Insurance Portal on June 27, 2025. Without explicitly mentioning group insurance, the insurer estimates that it realized over $600 million of benefits in 2024 from its digital customer leadership initiatives globally.
A growing market
Group insurance is our second most mature business sector.
– Mathieu Beauchesne, head of insurance at GFT Canada
As a platform integrator, GFT Canada is seeing a trend among insurers to migrate their group insurance systems based on revenues. The subsidiary of European multinational GFT Technologies has carved out a niche for itself in Canada as an integrator of the California-based Guidewire platform for property and casualty insurers.
Although property and casualty insurance is GFT Canada's most mature business, the implementation of platforms other than Guidewire now accounts for two-thirds of its revenues, Mathieu Beauchesne, head of insurance at GFT Canada, revealed in an interview with Insurance Portal.
Beauchesne adds that group insurance accounts for the largest share of these other sectors, “with a little individual life insurance,” among other things. “Group insurance is our second most mature business sector,” he says.
GFT Canada's group insurance adventure began with a mandate from Beneva (then SSQ Insurance and La Capitale) about eight years ago in property and casualty insurance and group insurance, says Beauchesne. “Group insurance then grew gradually,” he notes, adding that in 2025, GFT Canada won the tender to become the integrator of the Vitech platform in Canada. Jill Davidson confirmed this information.
Vitech has competition. Fineos first made a name for itself in Canada as a migration platform in group insurance claims management technology. Arriving in the United States 25 years ago, the Ireland-based insurtech company found its first customer in Canada with RBC Insurance a few years later.
Fineos now has 15 clients in Canada. For example, Securian Canada retained Fineos' services in July 2023 to implement its disability claims administration platform. Formerly Canadian Premier, Securian Canada acquired Sun Life's specialty markets portfolio in December 2021, which consists of association, affinity group, and group credit life insurance plans.
Fineos' clients also include the Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan (OTIP), Manitoba Public Insurance, and the Alberta Teachers' Association. "We see the Canadian market as an important market for future growth and opportunity. We've been growing for the past 20 years primarily in the claims space," said Michael Kelly, CEO and founder of Fineos, in an interview with Insurance Portal.
This growth did not happen overnight, according to Kelly. Focused on customer service, the first system developed by Fineos in the late 1990s facilitated its entry into the claims management niche the following year. However, the financial crisis of 2000 dampened insurers' enthusiasm for modernizing their systems, he recalls.
He recounts that a major global summit organized by Fineos in Toronto in 2014 allowed him to present the results of a study that rekindled insurers' interest. It revealed that most insurers were running on old systems, which didn't provide a comprehensive view of their group insurance customers and policyholders. Kelly then saw the opportunity to develop a cloud-based platform to address this gap.
Projects: Vast and Complex
Migration projects are often complex. For example, Fineos and Vitech are sometimes retained by the same client, who entrusts each with part of the migration task. This is the case with Beneva.
Beneva adopted Vitech's platform in 2022. In a press release, Beneva stated that it would use V3locity's applications for new group onboarding, policy administration, billing, and digital self-service. The insurer uses Fineos for claims management.
Desjardins Insurance adopted Vitech in 2024. A press release, issued by Vitech, stated that V3locity would handle policy administration, billing, and digital self-service portals for employers, employees, and brokers. In its 2024 annual report, Desjardins Group cites among its achievements the deployment of new digital features for group insurance members and clients, such as online plan enrollment and enhanced online claims services for all healthcare services.
At Beneva, Éric Trudel, Executive Vice-President and Leader, Group Insurance, explained in an interview with the Insurance Portal that the insurer chose the providers it considers to be the best in each of the four major functions that make up its new ecosystem:
- Vitech (V3locity) for contract administration, billing, group and member registration, commission payments, and infrastructure maintenance;
- Fineos for claims and benefits for life, critical illness, accidental death & dismemberment, and disability;
- TELUS Health for claims and benefits such as dental care;
- Majesco's Global IQX Sales & Underwriting Workbench, as a sales and underwriting tool for new and renewal business.
Trudel adds that La Capitale was already working with TELUS Health and Fineos. "With them, we revamped the offering and built features for the new ecosystem," he explains.
Going step by step
Insurers can choose to implement a new platform in different ways, according to two Levio executives, Marc Giguère and Patrice Valade, who were present at the interview with Jill Davidson of Vitech. Founded in Quebec City in 2014, Levio specializes in digital transformation consulting and has Canadian offices in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Charlottetown, as well as in Paris and India. The firm is incorporated in the United States under the name Levio Consulting.
Patrice Valade, Partner, Strategic Advisor and Retirement Practice Lead at Levio, says that some insurers may want to migrate their ongoing book of business because they have acquired another system. "They assume they will gain efficiency by migrating their book of business and generate return on investment," he explains.
Some will move gradually. "Other insurers may want to wait until the renewal to implement the client on the new system," adds Valade.
Beneva has chosen to gradually implement its technological ecosystem. "We are proceeding cautiously, because our priority is for the operation to be smooth, without impacting service to members and partners," explains Éric Trudel.
He says that since December 2023, new group insurance groups have been managed in this new ecosystem. "We have about fifty groups and continue to add more every month. Our clients are satisfied with the services offered, although the system is not yet in its final version." We are continuing to add features to gradually migrate our existing groups into this new ecosystem starting in 2027,” says Trudel.
Data History
Marc Giguère, Levio partner and co-head of the Vitech business practice, emphasized during the interview with Jill Davidson and Patrice Valade, that the diversity of group benefits increases the complexity of integrating a group into the new system. For example, the limit for some coverages is two years rather than one, Giguère points out. This requires rigorous data monitoring, compared to annually renewable or lifetime benefits.
Davidson cites the example of plans that cover optometry care. " Very commonly in Canada, you can get your prescriptions filled for glasses and it's only covered every two years. So, they need to have that data available for processing new claims which looks back at the historical data related to what those claims are," she points out. This observation also applies to dental and paramedical care. "It's a pretty wide coverage that an individual gets on a group insurance policy, which is one of the reasons it's complex to implement and migrate all of the data,” she explains.
History is crucial, adds Marc Giguère. "You need to be sure that you're not restarting from scratch, as you will lose money," he underlines.
Among the other challenges of group insurance, Giguère points out that there isn't the same uniformity in group insurance as there is in the property and casualty insurance industry. Insurers in this sector manage to resolve all their migration issues through a single platform like Guidewire.
