Government-backed home flood insurance coming to Canada?

By Greg Meckbach

Federal government officials are pondering a flood insurance system similar to Britain’s two-year old Flood Re, an Insurance Bureau of Canada official suggested Thursday.

Federal public safety minister Ralph Goodale “asked IBC to lead a working that will deliver recommendations by November” on insuring Canadian homes that have a high risk of flood, IBC vice president of federal affairs Craig Stewart said in an interview.

The working group will decide whether to recommend that Canada implement a system like Flood Re, launched in the United Kingdom in 2016. Flood Re is a reinsurer which is subsidized by a tax imposed on all carriers writing home insurance in Britain. In essence, this means 98% of the British population subsidizes high-risk property owners, Brendan McCafferty, then Flood Re’s chief executive officer, said in October, 2015 at the National Insurance Conference of Canada in Montreal. At the time, McCafferty was speaking on a flood insurance panel moderated by IBC president and CEO Don Forgeron.

With Flood Re, the British government “kind of created a facility program for homes at high risk of flood,” said Graham Haigh, vice president of business development at The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company, in a recent interview.

[...]