‘We should expect more from the private sector to drive innovation, to drive prevention,’ says Alan’s Mark Goad
With the exception of Beneva's formation in 2020, it’s been almost 70 years since Canada has seen a health insurance carrier enter its market.
Now, enter Alan. While it was founded in France about a decade ago, the digital-first group benefits provider carries a valuation of five billion euros – roughly eight billion Canadian dollars – and has grown its revenue from $500 million to $1.2 billion.
Mark Goad, Alan’s general manager for the Toronto area, frames Alan as a digital health partner that aims to combine top-tier insurance with prevention and access to care. He believes the company leads Canadian insurers on metrics like reimbursement speed, customer support, and member satisfaction, but argues that strong insurance alone is not enough.
“We're in a situation where we're paying more for healthcare every single year,” Goad underscored. “Premiums rise between seven and nine per cent every year, like clockwork for the past decade. We're paying more and more, and we're getting less for that care. And we can't do anything about it if we keep doing the same thing repeatedly. So Alan exists not only to deliver best-in-class health insurance, but to drive prevention and access to Canadians instantly, rather than asking a team of one for HR for 500 people to manage a program. So where we do that on the prevention side is through gamification.”
Alan uses gamification drawn from companies like Duolingo and Electronic Arts – daily health challenges, step competitions among colleagues, and a virtual currency that converts to charitable donations. Goad compares this to his experience running a virtual care company, where 3 per cent utilization was considered a success, whereas Alan reports 33 per cent weekly active users.
The platform also integrates virtual care directly into the insurance experience, starting with mental health. Alan covers an orientation session with a Canadian registered therapist and the first two follow-up sessions. Primary care is next, along with services from a longevity company Alan recently acquired in Europe.
"We spend $400 billion a year on healthcare in Canada, but $60 billion of that is private health premiums. That's a big chunk. And we should expect more from the private sector to drive innovation, to drive prevention," he said, adding in Alan's European operations, half of members who consult a doctor through the app don’t need to follow up with an emergency room visit or their family physician – notable in a country where approximately six million people lack one.
"If we can even make a tiny dent in that, and help families get through a little bit faster, it seems like really meaningful work," he added.
When asked how they compete with Canada’s largest insurers, Goad notes competition varies case by case, but for larger employers Alan tries to neutralize the standard objections around cost and coverage by matching what a company already has.
The argument then shifts to everything around the core plan: the app experience, preventive health tools, service levels, reimbursement speed, employee satisfaction, and ease of administration.
Still, he believes Alan’s portal is far simpler than the systems many employers are used to, with a high degree of automation and a much more intuitive interface. Once the conversation moves beyond plan design alone, he suggests Alan is confident it can compete directly with larger incumbents.
To that end, Goad is quick to highlight how the company is growing at more than 40 per cent month over month. Alan is also officially licensed as a carrier in every province and all three territories, a milestone it reached far faster than anyone expected. The original timeline was four years but Goad credits the speed to Alan's 10-year operating history in Europe and the trust that built with Canadian regulators.
According to Goad, Alan's internal capital solvency benchmarks also exceed what the federal regulator requires, which he says helped build trust. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, which led a funding round three years ago, also lent credibility and signalled that Alan was treating Canada as a serious long-term market rather than just a small experiment.
He believes the macroeconomic backdrop played a role too.
"Over the past three years, our relationship with our biggest trading partner has been completely rewritten. And there are a lot of Canadians are waking up to the fact that we need more competition, we need more entrants, we need more dynamism in our economy,” Goad noted. "When we bring folks over and we tell them what the margins are in Canada, they’re literally shocked.”
According to Goad, Alan’s 15 per cent premium reduction applies to large employers with 500 or more staff, where Alan’s entry into renewal talks often prompts incumbent carriers to sharply lower their pricing. He sees that less as an outlier than as evidence of what competition can do in a concentrated market.
He argues Canada is structurally tilted toward smaller employers, with about half of working Canadians employed at companies with fewer than 100 people. That makes the small and mid-sized segment especially important, he emphasized. While Alan started with very small firms, Goad acknowledged they’ve moved upmarket quickly, signing larger groups and showing that the same pitch can appeal across company sizes.
For him, the mid-market is the most poorly served as these employers often pay the highest fees, in part because traditional insurers still depend on manual, outdated processes. Alan’s digital model, he argues, cuts much of that friction by making signup and administration faster and simpler.
For employers with fewer than 100 staff, Alan’s approach is deliberately standardized, explained Goad. Rather than offering endless customization, the company currently sells a small set of benchmarked plans built from reviewing hundreds of existing benefit booklets. He acknowledges that can feel restrictive to buyers used to tweaking every coverage line, but argues the trade-off is lower cost and far less operational drag.
Tailored coverage for employers under 100 is also due next year, giving companies more room to adjust benefits such as massage or dental coverage, noted Goad.
According to Goad, Alan hasn’t recorded a single quarter in Canada without 100 per cent customer satisfaction, defined as four or five stars out of five. That includes cases involving claim denials, which he attributes to transparency in how policies are communicated up front. Ninety percent of reimbursements are processed within two hours.
After a serious cycling accident that left him with multiple fractures, Goad had a major dental surgery. By the time he got home, the reimbursement was already in his bank account. With half of Canadians unable to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense, he argues those details carry real weight for families under pressure.
“We're not really used to those types of incredible digital experiences but it can exist here. Those are the types of things I talk about to plan sponsors. This is possible. You can have something that's a strategic lever for you,” said Goad.
Still, he doesn’t want Alan to be known for the cost-effective care. While savings do matter, he believes Alan’s broader case rests on prevention, employee engagement, member experience, and service.
"I'll go toe-to-toe with any carrier in Canada to argue that we have the best service levels, the fastest response time, the highest member satisfaction. I actually think of us more of a telehealth platform that also does insurance," he said. "We do it not to be the best insurer, but to deliver necessary prevention and access tools to Canadians.”
