Toronto, June 30, 2026. HelloSafe publishes the first edition of its Travel Insurance Market Report. The global travel insurance market was worth an estimated $24 to 27 billion in 2024. Canada's own market is far smaller, an estimated $1 billion at its peak (the Conference Board of Canada put it near $990 million in 2018, and vendor estimates since have diverged), but it carries a distinct risk profile: an aging, snowbird-heavy traveller base whose medical exposure abroad is not covered by provincial health plans. This report opens on that reality, then works down: how the market breaks up, who carries the risk, how it is sold, and where the premium dollar goes.
In Canada, the coverage gap is the headline. About 42% of Canadian travellers go uninsured on trips abroad, and a full 25% wrongly believe their credit card's embedded coverage is enough, according to TD. That mismatch matters because, unlike many countries, Canadians who fall ill outside their home province can face medical bills with no domestic safety net attached, and the snowbird segment, retirees who winter in the US, is now pulling back on long-stay coverage as premiums climb with age and length of stay.
The report follows the money and maps the value chain, from the insurers who hold the risk to the managers, assistance companies and distributors who build and sell the cover. It keeps one rule: every figure is tagged by reliability, from primary source to order of magnitude. Where public data stops, HelloSafe relies on its own measurement, a multi-market quote engine and the Atlas distribution platform. Where useful, this report also places Canada against the roughly $24 to 27 billion global market and its largest players.
A market measured in tens of billions, Canada included
First, the size. The global travel insurance market was worth an estimated $24 to 27 billion in premiums in 2024. Canada is a small slice of that total, but a fast-growing one.
Canada's travel insurance market has been estimated near $1 billion at its peak, with the Conference Board of Canada putting it around $990 million in 2018. Vendor estimates since have diverged, reflecting how little standardized public reporting exists for the Canadian market compared with, say, the UK or Australia. What is clear is the direction: an aging population, rising trip costs, and growing snowbird exposure to US medical costs all push the market upward, even as some snowbirds pull back on the length and frequency of their stays.
Globally, the growth is not done either. Market research projects the sector to expand by around 18% a year through the end of the decade, which would put the global market on track to more than double by the early 2030s. Four rational forces underpin that pace. First, trip costs keep rising, and because a policy is priced as a share of trip value, premiums climb with them. Second, insurance is increasingly embedded straight into the booking, where 100% of the largest airlines now offer it and attach rates rise with every checkout. Third, penetration still has wide headroom in many markets: in Canada, about 58% of travellers already insure their trips, well ahead of the world average, but still leaving a meaningful uninsured minority. Fourth, medical-cost inflation abroad, especially in the US where Canadians spend the most travel days, and spreading visa mandates elsewhere push travellers toward higher, and pricier, medical limits.
Global total is a market-research estimate (Allied Market Research $23.8B, Grand View $27.05B for 2024); the per-market bars blend national associations and market research, scopes harmonized for comparison, and are shown in US$ to keep the global ranking comparable. Canada's own market, estimated near $1B at its 2018 peak (Conference Board of Canada), is not among the fifteen largest and is not shown on this global bar chart; see Part 1 text for the home-market figure. The ~18%-a-year outlook is a market-research projection (Allied models an 18.4% CAGR to 2034), not a HelloSafe forecast.
In Canada, the risk is medical, and it travels with the snowbirds
Unlike some markets built around trip cancellation, the Canadian product is anchored in one hard fact: provincial health plans stop at the border.
Emergency medical and assistance coverage is the product Canadians actually need, because provincial health insurance covers little to nothing once a traveller leaves Canada, and US hospital bills for even a short emergency can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. This is what separates the Canadian market from trip-cancellation-led markets: the core anxiety is a medical bill abroad, not a lost deposit.
The snowbird segment, retirees who spend weeks or months in Florida, Arizona and other southern US states each winter, has historically been the backbone of demand for longer-duration medical coverage. That segment is now pulling back, trimming trip length or skipping a winter, as premiums for older travellers and longer stays have climbed and as some snowbirds self-insure or lean on (often inadequate) credit card coverage instead. A full 25% of Canadians wrongly believe their card's travel insurance is enough on its own, according to TD, a gap that shows up only when a real claim arrives.
How many Canadians actually insure their trips
Canada sits in the middle of the global pack, well ahead of the world average but with a meaningful uninsured minority.
About 58% of Canadian travellers insure their trips, according to CAA's 2026 survey of 2,021 respondents, ahead of the world average of 45% but behind the United Kingdom (78%) and Sweden (88%). That leaves roughly 42% of Canadian travellers going uninsured, the gap this report opens on. The average Canadian premium runs about $195. Every point of penetration gained, particularly among snowbirds and cardholders who wrongly believe they are covered, is a market that widens.
The value chain: who does what
Behind a single travel insurance policy stand four different businesses. Confusing them is the most common mistake made about this market.
The brand a traveller sees, a bank, a credit card, a comparison site, a travel agency, is almost never the company carrying the risk. The risk sits with an insurer; between the two sit the managers who build and run the product and the assistance companies who answer the phone at 2 a.m. abroad. Reading the market means keeping these layers apart.
| Layer | What they do | Who they are |
|---|---|---|
| Risk carriers (insurers) | Hold the risk on their balance sheet and pay the claims | Manulife, Allianz Global Assistance, Blue Cross, TuGo, Beneva |
| Managers and MGAs | Design, price and administer the product on a carrier's paper, without carrying the risk | Cover-More, Trawick, IMG, Seven Corners, Tin Leg, battleface |
| Assistance companies | Run the 24/7 medical, evacuation and repatriation network and handle claims | Global Excel, Allianz Global Assistance, Medipac, International SOS |
| Distributors | Sell the cover to the traveller, usually at the point of booking | Banks and cards (RBC, TD, BMO, Desjardins), travel agencies, comparison sites, embedded insurtech |
A managing general agent (MGA) designs, prices and administers a program on an insurer's paper without holding the risk; an assistance company runs the medical and repatriation network; a third-party administrator handles claims. Global Excel, based in Quebec, is one of the world's larger travel-claims TPAs. One group can play several roles at once.
The insurers and assistance behind the brands
In Canada, the risk sits with a handful of familiar names, several of them working through the big banks; globally, the risk concentrates in a short list of carriers and assistance groups that is consolidating fast.
Canadian travel insurance is carried mainly by Manulife, Allianz Global Assistance, Blue Cross (the various provincial Blue Cross plans), TuGo and Beneva, often distributed through the major banks' credit cards, RBC, TD, BMO and Desjardins, which routes its card-embedded travel coverage through Allianz Global Assistance. Claims administration for snowbirds and long-stay travellers runs heavily through Global Excel, a Quebec-based third-party administrator, and Medipac, a specialist in snowbird and retiree medical coverage.
Globally, the biggest move of the year was consolidation. In December 2024 Zurich bought AIG's global personal travel business, Travel Guard, for about $600 million plus an earn-out, folding it into Zurich Cover-More, which now serves more than 20 million customers a year through 200-plus partners. Allianz Partners, the parent of Allianz Global Assistance, remains the single largest travel underwriter by volume worldwide and, rare among the groups, discloses a travel-specific line: about $3.5 billion in 2024, inside roughly $11 billion of total revenue, with its assistance and mobility arm alone booking about $3.6 billion. Most consumer brands Canadians see, whether a bank card or a comparison site, carry none of this risk themselves; they rent a balance sheet, as the table below shows for a sample of verified international links.
| Consumer brand | Who underwrites it | Market |
|---|---|---|
| American Express card travel | New Hampshire Insurance Co (AIG) | United States |
| Travel Insured International | US Fire Insurance (Crum & Forster) | United States |
| Post Office (UK) | Great Lakes (Munich Re) | United Kingdom |
| Nationwide FlexPlus | Aviva | United Kingdom |
Named-carrier links are verified from issuer and underwriter disclosures. Canadian bank-card programs are typically underwritten by the named Canadian carriers above (for example, Allianz Global Assistance for Desjardins), per issuer disclosures.
How Canadians buy: direct, banks and cards, and increasingly online
Canadians buy travel insurance mainly direct from insurers or bundled through their bank or credit card. Behind both channels, online purchase is now the norm.
The two dominant channels in Canada are direct purchase from an insurer and coverage bundled into a bank account or credit card, RBC, TD, BMO and Desjardins among the largest issuers. About 67% of policies are now bought online, whether directly on an insurer's site or through a bank's digital banking channel, reflecting the same shift toward digital purchase seen globally. Internationally, between 2022 and 2024, online aggregators grew 49.4% and direct-to-consumer 46.6%, far faster than traditional agents (up 22.8%), a pattern consistent with what Canadian insurers report anecdotally about their own online growth.
The embedded wave
The fastest shift is happening at the point of sale, where insurance is becoming a feature of the booking rather than a separate product, a trend Canadian banks are following through their card and banking apps.
According to the Ancileo benchmark, 100% of the forty largest airlines worldwide offered travel insurance in 2025, up from 70% in 2022, and 90% now build it straight into the booking flow. The mechanics are maturing too: 58% present insurance as an active opt-in, 39% as a forced choice, and only 3% as a pre-ticked box, a practice fading under regulatory pressure. Canadian banks show the equivalent pattern in miniature: travel coverage increasingly appears as an active add-on inside the banking app at the point a trip is booked on the card, rather than as a separate purchase.
Where the premium dollar goes
One question the market avoids: of every dollar of premium, how much comes back to the traveller? Canada does not publish it. Europe does, and the answer reframes the market.
The clearest read is the European regulator's. Of every premium dollar, EIOPA's decomposition returns about 40% in claims to travellers, 24% in commission to whoever sold the policy, 20% in the insurer's own costs, and 15% in net underwriting profit. Travel pays out less in claims than general non-life insurance (around 53%), yet nets a higher margin (15% versus 10%). It is, structurally, one of the most profitable products a seller can attach to a booking, whether that seller is a European agent or a Canadian bank card program.
Britain's regulator makes it starker. Under the FCA's 2024 value-measures data, single-trip travel cover sold as an add-on paid out just 23.6% of premium in claims, the lowest of any general-insurance line, against 54.4% for motor. The ABI reports its members paid about $600 million (converted from GBP) across more than 500,000 travel claims in 2024; medical was a third of claims by count but 55% by value.
Canada publishes none of this. No provincial insurance regulator isolates a travel combined ratio or a minimum loss ratio for travel products, and bank-embedded card coverage in particular discloses even less to the public than standalone insurer products. The world's largest markets are opaque on these economics too, which is exactly where HelloSafe's own measurement comes in.
EIOPA figures are regulator-grade EU averages (2017 data, published 2019), shown as shares of premium; they set the order of magnitude, not a Canada-specific split. Comparison and add-on channels ran far higher on commission, averaging 35% and reaching 89%. No travel-isolated loss ratio is published in Canada.
The commission engine
Why does every bank want to bundle travel insurance into its cards? Because it pays a margin few products offer.
Canadian per-channel commissions stay private, set in confidential distribution agreements between insurers and the banks, but the structure mirrors what is documented abroad. Industry estimates put traditional agents at 20 to 37% of the premium internationally, online platforms at 20 to 40%, full-service airlines near 24% and low-cost carriers often above 50%. Direct insurers keep that margin in-house. This is why banks, cards and comparison sites all compete for the attach: it is high-margin ancillary revenue, whether the point of sale is an airline checkout abroad or a Canadian credit card statement.
European (EIOPA) and UK (FCA) figures are regulator-grade; the per-channel bands are international industry estimates, not verified Canadian figures.
A consolidating, concentrated market
Behind the handful of familiar Canadian brands, ownership is concentrating internationally too.
Where an independent source exists, concentration is high: Spain's top-five carriers hold 67% of premiums and the top ten 93%. Consolidation is the direction of travel globally, from Zurich's purchase of Travel Guard to nib's full exit from Australian and New Zealand travel underwriting, with World Nomads sold to IMG. Canada's own market is similarly concentrated among a handful of carriers and bank-distribution relationships, though no independently verified top-five concentration figure is publicly available for Canada, so none is headlined here as fact.
Concentration figures: Spain is DBK Observatorio (market research); no verified equivalent concentration figure exists for Canada, flagged and not headlined.
The 15 markets, Canada compared against the field
Size, share of travellers insured, leading channel and dominant product, for the fifteen largest markets in the world, shown in US$ for global comparability. Canada, though not among the fifteen largest, sits closest in profile to the medical-and-assistance markets below.
| Market | Size | Travellers insured | Top channel | Dominant product |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | US$5.56B | ~40 % | OTAs and airlines | Trip cancellation |
| China | US$2.5B | ~20 % | OTAs and super-apps | Medical and micro-cover |
| United Kingdom | US$2.0B | ~75 % | Comparison sites | Medical and assistance |
| Japan | US$1.7B | ~50 % | Agencies and counters | Medical and assistance |
| Australia | US$1.5B | 86 % | Direct and comparison | Medical and assistance |
| India | US$1.3B | ~25 % | Brokers and bancassurance | Medical (visa) |
| South Korea | US$0.9B | ~60 % | Insurtech (Kakao Pay) | Medical and assistance |
| Germany | US$0.85B | ~54 % | Brokers and agencies | Cancellation |
| Italy | US$0.77B | ~30 % | Agencies | Medical and assistance |
| Mexico | US$0.65B | ~25 % | Agents and brokers | Medical and assistance |
| UAE | US$0.57B | ~70 % | Brokers and banks | Medical (visa) |
| Brazil | US$0.48B | ~30 % | OTAs and banks | Medical and assistance |
| Netherlands | US$0.47B | ~80 % | Direct insurers | Medical (annual policy) |
| Spain | US$0.32B | ~24 % | OTAs and embedded | Medical and assistance |
| Switzerland | US$0.31B | ~75 % | Cards and auto clubs | Cancellation and assistance |
| Singapore | US$0.25B | ~70 % | Direct insurers | Medical and assistance |
Sources: national associations and market research, 2024, kept in US$ for global comparability. Scopes harmonized for comparison. Canada is not among the fifteen largest markets by premium volume (estimated near US$0.7-0.8B equivalent at its 2018 peak) and is not listed in this global ranking; see Part 1 for the home-market figure in Canadian dollars.
The rules of the game
Regulation shapes both what gets sold and what gets disclosed, and Canada's own patchwork, provincial rather than national, sits between the light-touch US model and Europe's tighter disclosure regime.
In Canada, travel insurance is regulated province by province through provincial insurance councils, with agents and brokers generally licensed under the Life Licence Qualification Program (LLQP) framework alongside provincial insurance-act requirements. Licences belong to the insurers and licensed intermediaries who hold them, not to any comparison or marketplace site itself. Quebec is the notable exception: the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) treats compare-and-quote activity as an advisory function requiring broker registration, a stricter reading than in the rest of Canada. Federally, the collection and use of personal data by insurers and distributors falls under Quebec's Law 25 and, elsewhere in Canada, PIPEDA.
Internationally, the two extremes are instructive. The United States runs travel insurance under the NAIC's Travel Insurance Model Act (#632), a light-touch "limited lines" license paired with almost no disclosure of loss ratios. Europe runs the opposite way: under the Insurance Distribution Directive, every distributor including a travel agency must register, and both EIOPA and the UK's FCA have publicly scrutinized how little add-on travel cover pays out. Canada's provincial model, and Quebec's stricter advisory framing in particular, sits closer to the European instinct to regulate the point of sale than to the US's lighter touch.
What HelloSafe measures
The map has clear blank spots in Canada, and they are the same ones seen everywhere: the numbers distribution keeps to itself.
No Canadian regulator publishes a travel loss ratio, a per-channel commission on bank-embedded cards, or a real attach rate for snowbird and long-stay policies; market-size estimates for Canada diverge sharply between research houses, a gap this report flags rather than papers over. That private detail, the price actually paid by channel, the commission, the conversion, is exactly what HelloSafe measures. Its quote engine compares, for the same traveller, the price of a cover by the channel that sells it; its Atlas platform observes real conversion and commission by actor family. Edition after edition, market by market, the report will make public what distribution keeps to itself.
In Canada, travel insurance is sold at the point of booking, often bundled into a bank card, at the very moment a traveller assumes they are already covered. The product should follow the real risk: a medical emergency abroad that provincial health care will not pay for, not a false sense of security from a card's fine print. Mapping who distributes, who underwrites, and where the premium dollar really goes is how the market sells better, and fairer.
The Travel Insurance Market Report is an annual HelloSafe publication. The 2026 edition opens with Canada and places it against the world's largest markets; future editions will deepen each market and refine the measures of price, attach, commission and claims economics.
Full methodology, primary sources and reliability levels are available on request from the press team.
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About HelloSafe
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