Travel insurance: Our comparison chart expands

Its absence from the article Travel Insurance: Coverage from birth to age 99, published December 11, 2025, prompted a response from CAA-Québec, one of the affiliated clubs of the non-profit CAA (Canadian Automobile Association).

Suzanne Michaud, Vice-President, Insurance at CAA-Québec, informed the Insurance Portal that her organization is indeed present in the distribution of travel insurance in Quebec, and not only to its members.

“People often think that we only sell travel insurance to CAA-Québec members. We also sell a lot to non-members…In 2025, we sold 49% of our policies to members and 51% to non-members,” Michaud revealed in an interview.

CAA-Quebec’s Travel Insurance product is provided by Orion Travel Insurance, an insurer created in 2013 by several automobile associations in Canada. The risk is underwritten by Échelon Insurance, an insurer acquired by CAA Club Group in 2019.

While CAA-Quebec Travel Insurance is available to everyone in Quebec, members benefit from a 10% discount on the insurance premium, Michaud added. She explained that this discount takes the form of preferred pricing: if a non-member’s travel insurance premium is $100, a member representing the same risk will pay a premium of $90.

Three distribution channels

Michaud estimates that CAA-Québec holds a market share of “approximately 10% in travel insurance in Quebec.” She explains that CAA-Québec has three distribution channels through which consumers can purchase its products: online, through a call centre agent, or at a travel agency.

In the case of the call centre, Michaud specifies that agents are health and accident insurance representatives certified by Quebec’s financial markets regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). “You can also go to a CAA travel centre. There, you can obtain insurance from a travel advisor licensed by the Office de la protection du consommateur (Consumer Protection Office),” says Michaud.

Born from a partnership between the CAA Club Group and the Alberta Motor Association (AMA) in 2013, Orion Travel Insurance provides travel insurance products for the AMA and the following CAA clubs, in addition to the Quebec club: CAA Atlantic (which includes New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador), CAA South-Central Ontario, CAA Niagara and CAA North & East Ontario, CAA Saskatchewan, and CAA Manitoba.

Enhanced InsuranceINTEL table

While the CAA-Quebec product is accessible to everyone, Suzanne Michaud emphasizes that it is primarily developed to meet the needs of its members. “For example, many of our Francophone members go to Florida in the winter. Not all of them are fluent in English. For emergency medical care, we have ensured that hospitalized individuals can have a companion who speaks the language of the country they are visiting,” she explains. Michaud adds that CAA-Québec Travel Insurance also includes coverage for the repatriation of pets that may be traveling with the insured person being repatriated for medical reasons or due to death.

In the InsuranceINTEL database, the insurance product information centre of the Insurance Journal Publishing Group, only Québec Blue Cross and Ontario Blue Cross mention that repatriation also includes that of pets.

The comparative table of travel insurance products published on the Insurance Portal on December 11 revealed a selection of these products. The table below is the version enhanced with data from CAA-Québec.