Toronto-based online life and health insurance distributor PolicyMe began offering personal auto and home insurance products from three insurers in 2026. On its website, the brokerage identifies Intact, Pafco and Pembridge as its property and casualty (P&C) insurance partners.
This marks the insurance technology company’s (commonly known as an “insurtech”) first foray into P&C insurance. As an online distributor, it has already been offering term life insurance products, critical illness, health and dental insurance for several years. These products are underwritten by Securian Canada. PolicyMe says it offers most of them in every province and territory across Canada.
At the time of writing, PolicyMe states on its website that its P&C insurance products are available only in Ontario. The platform allows consumers to obtain insurance quotes by entering information such as their name, date of birth and address. The insurtech notes that licensed advisors are available to answer customers’ questions.
The distributor highlights the potential savings from bundling auto and home insurance coverage: “Save up to $320,” its website states. According to a footnote, this amount is an estimate based on the profiles of most PolicyMe customers.
PolicyMe’s home insurance offering is currently limited to homeowners and condo owners. Its website indicates that insurance for co-owners and tenants will be available soon.
Getting to know customers better
How does the company intend to distribute life and P&C insurance products on a single platform, given that the industry has traditionally handled these two lines of business in silos? “For them [customers], it's one category of products. They want to buy insurance from the same place and see all their policies in one place. You want to work with one broker or one entity,” said Andrew Ostro, co-founder and CEO of PolicyMe, in an interview conducted several months earlier.
According to Ostro, such a platform also allows the company to save money. “We can cross-sell products across the whole ecosystem into customers. That creates a lot of efficiency both in how we pay our marketing department and how we acquire customers.”
Full customer experience launching in January
During the interview, Ostro described his P&C insurance initiative as a “soft launch.” He explained why the offering was then limited to Ontario. “We're still in beta testing mode. we're online and able to sell a policy, but we're not marketing yet,” he said.
Following an email request for an update from Insurance Portal, Ostro indicated on October 9 that he was still refining the company’s home and auto insurance offering. “We will be fully launching our AI-infused customer experience in January,” Ostro added. He provided no further details.
During the interview, Ostro had emphasized the importance he places on the customer experience, saying that the purchasing process would be straightforward and that the technology would be fully integrated with insurers’ systems.
PolicyMe’s co-founder also believed the company could benefit from the data it collects. “With the data we have across all the customers, that allows us to create better experiences because we know more about our customers in different events,” Ostro explained during the interview.
As for the three insurers PolicyMe works with, the insurtech states on its website that it deals exclusively with them “for now.” However, Ostro does not intend to significantly expand its roster of providers. “There's certainly room to add one or two more, but that's probably where we'll stop,” he said in the interview. PolicyMe, he explained, favours deeper relationships with each of its providers.
