One of Canada’s oldest continually operating trade associations, the CLHIA was founded in 1894 as the Canadian Life Managers Association. At the time, household savings averaged only $12 per capita and very few employers offered retirement savings or health benefits of any kind. Life insurers offered the only financial security for families against the risks of premature death or living beyond their working years.
For more than 130 years, our association has evolved from helping Canada's early life and health insurers fulfill their promises to policyholders, to helping our current 65 member companies providing a wide range of financial products and health services to protect Canadians and their families.
The corner of Toronto's King and Bay streets, looking westward, where the association was founded in 1894. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, free media repository
“[In 1894] life insurance was a relatively simple product. Times have changed dramatically and life and health insurers now offer an incredibly diverse range of protection and wealth accumulation products and services. Throughout this evolution, the CLHIA has supported the industry by providing a forum in which member companies can share ideas, address public policy issues and develop programs to assist the public in understanding the difficult financial world in which we live.” – former CLHIA Chairman John McNeil, on CLHIA’s 100th anniversary in 1994.
1894 – Executives of eight life insurance companies met at the corner of Toronto’s King and Bay streets on May 5 to found the Canadian Life Managers Association, the first such association in the insurance sector in North America. Their association was created as a forum to share information about a young industry that had previously been dominated by much larger US and British firms.
Its first president, Alexander G. Ramsay, the President of Canada Life, undertakes a study of Canadians’ life expectancy. He finds that Canadians could expect to live longer than Americans, Britons or Germans. His survey makes an impression on British insurers who for years had charged Canadians higher premiums because of “climatic hazards.” Ramsay would himself live to age 86 – at a time when few men lived past 70.
1901 – The association incorporates itself as the Canadian Life Insurance Officers Association and would continue to operate under this name until 1965.
1919 – The association persuades the federal government to allow insurers to offer group life insurance, so that businesses can provide insurance as a benefit to their employees. Demands from labour unions results in an expansion of group insurance lasting even through the depression of the 1930s.
Through the association, the industry takes an active interest in promoting the health and well-being of Canadians, supporting initiatives in the field of health and medicine in 1927. The industry supports child welfare clinics and provides funding to combat tuberculosis in partnership with the Canadian Tuberculosis Association.
The association publishes a pamphlet entitled What to Eat to be Healthy. It would continue to be a best seller through to the 1960s, when the federal government began publishing Canada’s Food Guide.
Canada’s life insurance companies, their agents, with the help of the association, raise over $1.5 billion ($15 billion in today’s dollars) in victory bonds during the war years.
The post-war era contributes to a massive housing boom in cities across the country. Life insurance companies finance mortgage and real estate investments that help finance more than a million homes for Canadians.
Over the course of the 1900s, life insurance companies provided financing to support one in seven mortgages.
Photo: The west end neighbourhood of Vancouver courtesy of the City of Vancouver archives
In 1965, the association drops the word "Officers" from its name to better reflect its change from an organization of individuals to an organization of member companies. It operates as the Canadian Life Insurance Association until 1981.
1966 – A special committee of the association recommends that member companies become a major sponsor of Montreal's Expo ’67. The companies’ joint centennial project is sponsorship of the Meditheatre in Expo 67’s "Man and His Health" Pavilion – a showcase of modern medical advances.
The association expands and formalizes a government relations program. The approach encourages direct contact with legislators, public officials and other “opinion makers” by the senior officers of member companies.
A major consumer information initiative, in 1973 the association establishes a Consumer Information Centre operating from Toronto and Montreal. The Centre’s hotline handles inquiries from the public about life and health insurance products and services, provides copies of association publications, helps beneficiaries find existing life insurance policies, and offers assistance for consumer complaints.
A program to provide young scholars with the opportunity to learn about parliament first-hand by working in MPs’ offices was established in the late 1960s. Impressed by it, Edward Crawford, then President and C.E.O. of Canada Life persuades nine life and health insurance companies to be the first private sponsors of the Parliamentary Internship Programme (PIP). The association took over the role of providing funding on behalf of its member companies in 1973.
In 1981, the Canadian Life Insurance Association merged with the Canadian Association of Accident and Sickness Insurers to create the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc., the name the association operates under to this day.
In 1988, the association formed a CEO Task Force on AIDS Projects. The Task Force succeeded in mobilizing the voluntary support of 67 member companies, contributing more than $1.14 million for AIDS research.
1988 – CLHIA and the industry take a transformative step towards self-regulation and consumer protection with the creation of a non-profit corporation known today as Assuris, Funded by life insurance companies, Assuris is able to protect policy holders in the unlikely event a life insurance company were to fail.
Following years of hard work by the association, on June 1, 1992, new federal insurance legislation was proclaimed removing barriers to life and health insurance companies to fully compete with banks and other financial institutions on a wider share of products for consumers.
In 1994, CLHIA celebrated 100 years as an association. A commemorative edition of our publication "IMPACT" was produced and distributed exclusively to CLHIA's member companies (the digital copy is worth reading).
May 29, 1996: CLHIA and its member companies raise funds to support an initiative by the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians to unveil 34 bronze plaques listing the names of every parliamentarian to serve in the House of Commons and Senate since Confederation. New plaques have been added for each parliament since. With renovations to Centre Block underway, the plaques are being moved the a new visitor centre on Parliament Hill.
1998 – In response to a request for assistance from the Canadian Jewish Congress, the association established a toll-free service to help locate unclaimed insurance proceeds that may be owed to victims and survivors of the Holocaust and their heirs. Within two years the service had answered 255 enquiries.
August 14, 2002: In order to ensure the highest standards of consumer protection, the industry and CLHIA create an independent agency to help resolve consumer complaints. Today the OmbudService for Life and Health Insurance investigates complaints that consumers are unable to resolve with their insurer. Beginning in 2004, it also responds to consumer questions about insurance and helps Canadians locate lost life insurance policies.
2009 – CLHIA leads the adoption of Guiding Principles to Support Good Mental Health in the Workplace - a commitment by member companies to improve knowledge of mental health and provide positive support for employees’ mental health as part of their operations.
Concerned with financial literacy, the association created five guides in 2010 to help consumers make informed decisions about their financial security. Guides on Life Insurance, Travel Insurance, Disability Insurance, Supplementary Insurance and Segregated Funds are still in circulation and available on our website.
June 12, 2012: Following a suggestion from the association and industry, the federal government establishes a framework to implement Pooled Registered Pension Plans - a flexible pension plan available to all working Canadians.
To help employers cope with increasing costs of new drugs to treat rare diseases, the industry forms the Canadian Drug Insurance Pooling Corporation in 2012, a non-profit corporation that shares catastrophic drug costs across the entire insurance industry to ensure patients get the coverage they need.
2012 - Manitoba Blue Cross becomes the last of the seven regional non-profit health insurers to join CLHIA, the others having joined between 2006 and 2011. Today, the association's members represent 99 per cent of the life and health insurance business in Canada.
CLHIA’s Toronto office for over 20 years (from March 1991 to October 2014) was located at 1 Queen Street East, which was connected to what remained of the largest office building in 19th-century Toronto after a devastating fire; the Confederation Life Building at Yonge and Richmond Sreets. Built in 1893, it was home to the insurance company founded by John Kay Macdonald in 1871.
Photo credit: Mike Slaughter, 1976. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library
2014 – Better known in the financial sector and with regulators, CLHIA unveils a new logo that uses only the association’s acronym in French and English. The emblem’s blue-grey-yellow-green colours are meant to represent Canada’s oceans, mountains, prairies and forests.
2015 – CLHIA's board of directors elects Mary Forrest, President and Chief Executive Officer, North America (Life) of Munich Reinsurance Company as its first female chairperson.
On July 1, 2017 Stephen Frank becomes the 8th president and chief executive officer of CLHIA.
On May 5, the CLHIA celebrated 125 years as an association representing Canada’s life and health insurers. To mark the occasion, the association's logo was modified to add a 125 icon.
On May 23 CLHIA’s Fraud is Fraud campaign won gold in the Marketing and Communications Campaign category at the Achieving Communications Excellence (ACE) Awards presented by the Canadian Public Relations Society. The “Fraud is Fraud” campaign is an ongoing initiative of the life and health insurance industry to increase awareness of the real consequences of #benefits fraud.
For the second time in its 126 year history, CLHIA’s board elects a female chairperson. Alka Gautam, President and Chief Executive Officer of RGA Life Reinsurance Company of Canada, was appointed on on June 25.
The CLHIA continues to operate as a not-for-profit, membership-based organization that represents virtually all of Canada's life and health insurance companies. Our member companies, through a wide range of products and services, help Canadians protect themselves and their families against the financial risks of premature death, illness and retirement. Products include individual and group life insurance, supplementary health insurance and individual and group annuities (including RRSPs, RRIFs, TFSAs and Defined Contribution pension plans).
“The idea of pooling risk in the event people suffered illness and injury, died prematurely or lived beyond their working years made as much sense in 1894 as it does today. CLHIA and our members are proud to have supported the financial security of Canadians for over 125 years, and we look forward to many, many more.” – Stephen Frank, President and CEO, Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association
Credits:
Created with an image by Laura Fuhrman - "untitled image"