The insurance company Beneva has announced its intention to merge with Canada's oldest property and casualty insurance mutual, Gore Mutual. The project was made public on Jan. 21, 2025, and is expected to go ahead in January 2026, once approved by their respective members and regulatory authorities.
Beneva, already Canada's largest mutual insurer, will thus be able to expand further in the Ontario market and elsewhere in the country. Gore Mutual was founded in 1839 by merchants in the Gore district of Cambridge, in response to a major fire in their community.
Cambridge is midway between Kitchener and Hamilton, at the southwestern end of Lake Ontario. The mutual also has locations in Toronto and Vancouver. It holds operating permits in all provinces except Quebec.
Gore Mutual is focused on property-casualty lines for individuals and businesses. All of its premium volume comes from the brokerage network.
Once the merger is approved, Gore Mutual will combine its operations with Unica and operate as a standalone subsidiary. Unica employs some 400 people and serves the P&C insurance market outside Quebec.
Unica, a subsidiary of Beneva, is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. In the longer term, the new entity will be known as Beneva.
Gore Mutual has 600 employees and offers general insurance products to some 300,000 members and customers, both individuals and businesses. It has assets of around $1.8 billion.
With Beneva's 5,500 employees and 3.5 million members and customers, the new entity will have 6,100 employees and 3.8 million members and customers. Beneva's post-merger assets will total $27 billion.
Once the project has been approved at their respective general meetings, Gore Mutual members will join Beneva members as full members of the merged entity.
Long process
On the day of the announcement, Beneva CEO Jean-François Chalifoux was in Quebec City to speak with Quebec journalists. He will be in Ontario next week.
In an interview with the Insurance Portal, Chalifoux explained that the impending federal parliamentary election is delaying the merger process somewhat, compared to what happened in 2020, when mutuals SSQ and La Capitale announced their intention to merge and become Beneva. “The earliest we think this transaction will close is January 1, 2026,” he said.
Gore Mutual is registered under a federal charter, and the proposed merger must be approved by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) and the Competition Bureau of Canada. The merger will have to be confirmed by a private bill to be passed by the Canadian Senate.
For Beneva, the same approvals will have to come from Quebec regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers, and through the adoption of a private bill by the National Assembly of Quebec.
“There's a part of the agenda that we don't control,” said Chalifoux. “We'll work with that schedule. That said, we're not too worried. It's good news for Canadians, and excellent news for Quebec. We think the various authorities will want to collaborate on the project.”
Shared values
Chalifoux points to the origins of Gore Mutual's founding, which are quite similar to those of the two mutuals that joined forces in 2020 to create Beneva. “It's very interesting. We have a mutual for merchants on one side. On the other, we have a very young mutual, but one that grew out of the merger of two mutuals: a mutual of blue-collar workers in Quebec City's Lower Town, who had joined forces to offer each other health services, and the civic employees' mutual created by Quebec government employees who wanted to help each other out following a death,” he points out.
The original members of the three mutuals had complementary interests, but “they share common values that can be associated with fairness, equality, solidarity and mutual aid”, emphasizes Chalifoux. “In 2025, these values are just as important as they were at the origin of our two organizations. We are very proud to strengthen the Canadian mutualist movement with this announcement.”
When the merger that led to the creation of Beneva was announced on January 28, 2020, its promoters were already aiming to better position the insurer in the Canadian market. “We wanted Beneva to be a fertile and welcoming ground for other smaller mutuals that would eventually consider that size becomes an asset to face the current challenges in our respective markets,” Chalifoux added.
Although the Unica subsidiary is affected by the proposed merger, L'Unique Assurances générales' operations in Quebec are unaffected, and this subsidiary will be maintained, says Chalifoux. “Outside Quebec, Beneva deals with an external distribution network of life and health insurance brokers, general insurance brokers, wholesalers, group insurance third-party payers, consulting actuaries and brokers specializing in group insurance,” says Chalifoux.
He expects an enthusiastic response from the brokerage network following the announcement. At the time of the interview, meetings were ongoing with employees. Chalifoux is convinced that Gore Mutual staff will be happy to join a larger company. “We experienced it at Beneva not so long ago. This represents opportunities for growth and development,” he said.
Data
In 2023, Gore Mutual's insurance revenues totaled $699.3 million, up 11% on the previous year's total of $636.7 million. These figures were provided to the Insurance Portal by MSA Research.
With nearly $8 billion in total premiums, the merger will consolidate Beneva's position as Canada's seventh-largest insurer. In general insurance, Beneva will rank 10th in Canada, and 3rd in Quebec.
Still, according to figures provided to MSA, Gore Mutual’s results showed losses in 2022 and 2023, with a combined ratio exceeding the 100% mark. Chalifoux does not foresee any problems.
“We have absolutely no concerns in this regard. Gore is in growth mode, and there is a cost to that. Gore will continue to be in growth mode, but in a much larger family with resources at its disposal,” he said.
At Gore
The Insurance Portal also spoke to Andy Taylor, President and CEO of Gore Mutual. He explains that he began talking to Jean-François Chalifoux about two years ago, because he wanted to learn more about the reasons behind Beneva's success.
“We were watching Beneva from the outside and we thought it was a great example of what we wanted to accomplish ourselves in the future – an exciting new branding of two companies, their values rooted in protecting people. Our company is ‘Insurance that does good’. We believe that mutuals can have a bigger impact in our communities and in Canada,” said Taylor.
In his view, the merger of the two mutuals is first and foremost about shared values, rather than a financial transaction. “The fact that we can operate as a separate and distinct subsidiary allows us to have continuity in our leadership team, our board of directors, our employees,” he says.
“We have a commitment to the community that we’re in. We anticipate growing the workforce, giving back to the workforce. There where a whole bunch of those factors that made this opportunity different from other ones we were exploring. It just felt right,” said Taylor.
Scale, diversification and access to capital
“Although we’d had a successful past, we believed that in order to thrive in the future as a P&C company we’d need to have scale, diversification and access to capital. Even though we were a successful company, we were still a mid-size, regional player and we competed against the largest in the industry, which makes us kind of unique,” he explained.
Since 2020, Gore Mutual has made major changes to reposition itself in the market. “Over the last five years, we’ve completely rebuilt our company. It’s remarkable what we’ve accomplished. Today we have industry leading technology companies, we’ve doubled the size of our workforce, we’ve opened an office in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) and expanded. We grew the company by about 40%. Even with that success – this year will be about $700 million in total premium – we still remain a mid-size regional player,” said Taylor.
Some $200 million of this premium comes from commercial lines. About a third of premium volume comes from personal automobile insurance, Taylor adds. Together with Unica's volume, this represents nearly $1 billion in premium volume, and over $3 billion in general insurance premiums for the group as a whole.
National broker partners
“Over the last five years we’ve developed great relationships with all of the large national broker partners, and they’re looking for really strong mutual partners to help them grow. And, they want to have choice for their customers,” adds Taylor.
Gore’s insurance results in 2023 were affected by forest fires, a particular risk in the West where Gore also operates. In 2024, the entire industry was affected by weather-related amounting to over $8.5 billion in insured losses, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.
*With files from Donna Glasgow.
