The P & C (Property and Casualty) insurance market in Canada is worth billions, and you might be surprised to learn that bloggers just like yourself can monetize their websites by promoting Canadian insurance affiliate programs.
5 big names dominate Canadian insurance. As an affiliate, you’ll find there are a lot of insurance affiliate programs for Canada that are actually from some lesser-known brands since they need your help to generate leads.
Insurance products you can earn from include:
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Auto insurance
- Pet insurance
- Travel insurance for Canadians
- Travel insurance for tourists coming to Canada.
Some insurance policies in Canada are mandatory, such as auto insurance and certain types of home insurance products. Other products are for peace of mind and financial security. These can include critical illness cover that can protect income in the event of illnesses or pet insurance to cover the cost of medical care should a beloved family pet need a vet.
The majority of insurance affiliate programs work on a pay per lead, pay per quote or a pay per call commission structure. Pay per sale commissions are less popular, probably because the cost of some plans can be in the thousands, but also because the companies don’t want you making promises they can’t keep!
You’re not a salesperson. You’re the lead generator. The salesperson is a professional at what they do. Plus, there’s usually a solid (multi-million-dollar, ehem) sales funnel in place to handle those qualified leads.
When you apply to join any insurance affiliate program, your application will be reviewed to make sure your audience is a match for the companies line of insurance products. Actually, financial affiliate programs are notoriously hard to get into because there are strict regulations on how financial services can be promoted, so insurance companies only want to work with the top tier affiliates.
When applying, make sure:
- Your site visitors will be interested in the type of products they offer
- Your site is likely to get good (quality) clicks
- You have a history of quality content to show off
- Your site has a relatively good amount of traffic
In the insurance industry, the more niche you go, the better your conversions will be. Nobody looks for general “insurance”. People look to insure specific items, or get insurance for specific events.
For general insurance quote comparison engines, the market is pretty much dominated by major players like Money Supermarket and Compare the Market.
It is still possible to earn affiliate income from an insurance comparison site. But it’ll be a lot easier to have a pet insurance comparison site or a new driver insurance comparison site rather than something catering to every type of insurance product.
Canadian Insurance Website Ideas
- Niche insurance comparison engines (you can buy WP themes for these from Themeforest and the Envato Marketplace)
- Personal finance blogs for specific groups of people
- Renters blog offering tips to tenants to budget, save money to buy their own home
- Driving tips new drivers
- RV insurance for tourists driving around Canada
- Travel insurance for Canadian nature adventurers
- Travel insurance for Canadians going to the USA
- Home insurance for new home owners fixing up old homes
- Specific types of pet blogs, such as those focused on dogs, cats or rabbits
- Weird pets are another field you may want to research as there are provinces in Canada where people can legally keep a wallaby or pygmy goat as a pet
Insurance Affiliate Programs for Canada
- World Nomads
- Kanetix
- Rate Supermarket
- TuGo
- Square One Insurance
- Leadworks
- Trupanion
- Optimal Travel
- International Insurance
- Visitors Coverage
- Vacation Property Protection
- Insurance Hotline
1. World Nomads
World Nomads is the most recommended travel insurance company for those living the nomadic lifestyle. They are recommended by Lonely Planet and many other high profile brands in the travel industry.
The company provides adventure travel insurance for short and long term, however, for nomads, most plans will be 3 or 6 months, sometimes longer.
The World Nomad affiliate program is suitable for backpackers venturing to Canada and those leaving Canada to travel the world. The cover is available in 140 countries and over 250 types of adventurous activities can be covered.
They’re also transparent with their customers about what their policies cover and don’t.
As a World Nomad Partner, you get access to support managers and some training to get you started.
Referral links last for 60 days and the commissions are 10% per sale.
Apply to join the World Nomads partner program here
2. Kanetix
Kanetix is among the leaders of Canadian comparison sites to save money on every type of insurance people and families need.
The site has been around since 1999 and is used by thousands of Canadians every month, mostly for car insurance and travel insurance.
The website has options to search for quotes for
- Car insurance
- Home insurance
- Life insurance
- Travel insurance
- Pet insurance
- Commercial insurance for businesses
Affiliate commissions vary by the type of insurance someone gets a quote for. The highest paying category is auto insurance paying $1 to $4 based on volume.
Travel insurance affiliates earn $0.70 for standard quotes, or for people traveling for 30+ days and for those over 50, you’ll earn $3 per lead.
Think about over 50s taking a five or six-week road trip in an RV across Canada.
There’s the travel insurance and there’s the auto insurance too, not to mention the rental commissions on RVs if you’re promoting those to an over 50s audience. See the potential?
Other commissions are:
- Life insurance: $1.25 per lead
- Business insurance: $1 per lead
- Home insurance: $0.6 per lead
- Health insurance: $0.6 per lead
- Motorcycle insurance: $0.25 per lead.
Other search options Kanetix provide that aren’t included in the affiliate program are credit cards, mortgage products and at time of writing (Sept. 2019), pet insurance isn’t listed in the affiliate payout table provided on the affiliate page.
Sign up the Kanetix Canada Affiliate Program here
3. Rate Supermarket
The Rate Supermarket affiliate program is one that’ll be suited to money-saving bloggers.
Interestingly, Rate Supermarket is part of the Kanetix brand so what you don’t earn in commissions from the Kanetix affiliate program (credit cards and mortgages), you can earn those commissions by referring people to RateSupermarket.ca instead.
This is a comparison engine for all types of personal finance products including life insurance, travel insurance, car insurance, and home insurance.
They don’t have the option to compare health insurance plans like the Kanetix website does, so you may want to join both programs if you’re covering different types of lifestyle insurance such as dental cover.
An upside with this affiliate program is you get a range of tools you can use to help with promotions.
Affiliate tools include:
- Widgets for your website
- Calculators that let your visitors calculate savings before clicking through
- Monthly deals
- Various banners
There’s enough tools for affiliates to test different methods and tweak your site for better conversions based on what your visitors respond to best.
Sign up to the RateSupermarket.ca affiliate program here
4. TuGo
TuGo is a long-established Canadian travel insurance company and a more recent entrant (2018) to the insurance affiliate marketing industry.
The program is quite unique in that they prefer affiliates who aren’t experts in the travel industry. The ideal affiliates should be based in Canada either as an individual or a not-for-profit organization.
Affiliates based in Manitoba, Nunavut, and Quebec aren’t currently eligible to partner with TuGo.
The affiliate program is designed for travel-inspiring bloggers and lifestyle bloggers who aren’t licensed to sell insurance. Those who are licensed can partner as brokers.
The affiliate program is for bloggers and influencers who can’t sell insurance but can refer tourists and earn commissions for those referrals.
Sign up the TuGo affiliate program here
5. Square One Insurance
Square One insurance is part of the Mutual Fire Insurance brand and has been around since 2011 focusing solely on home insurance for Canadians. They have insurance for homeowners and renters.
The affiliate program is privately run and it doesn’t pay automatically. You need to invoice the company, however, the rates are decent provided you’re confident that your leads can convert into sales.
In other words, know your audience and build your credibility as you grow your website or blog.
As an affiliate of Square One, you’ll be acting as an independent contractor.
The company provides you with a referral link and a customizable widget for your site.
The tracking stats collected and provided are the number of qualified clicks you get, policies sold from those and the total amount you earned for the quarter.
Commissions on policies sold are:
- $50 CAD for tenants insurance
- $100 CAD for condo owners insurance
- $175 CAD for homeowners insurance
Square One insurance covers British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. Other provinces including Montreal and Quebec aren’t covered.
This could be an attractive option to monetize blogs focused on helping homeowners and tenants save money, provided it’s targeted marketing towards the areas covered.
Examples could be DIY home repair blogs or sites helping tenants save a deposit for a mortgage.
A neat aspect of Square One home insurance is their common belongings policy as it automatically covers common items like electronics, appliances, furniture, and clothing with no itemization needed.
Specialty cover is for things like bicycles, jewelry, and golf equipment, which are add-ons with Square One that lets homeowners customize what they insure and for how much.
For affiliates, there’s a bit more work involved due to the manual invoicing, payments being every quarter and paid by cheque.
As an aside, being an affiliate here lets you learn the ropes of lead generation as you are effectively getting paid per lead conversion. That comes in handy for this next program.
Apply to join the Square One affiliate program here
6. Leadworks
Leadworks is a tech company in the B2B (business to business) selling leads to Canadian insurance firms.
As specialists in lead generation, they are looking to recruit affiliates with experience in paid advertising, although if you have a good SEO portfolio for local lead generation in Canada, you could be a good match.
They are active in 8 personal finance categories, 5 of which are insurance – life, pet, home, auto, and health insurance.
If you have the skills to generate leads for insurers in Canada, Leadworks have the technology and partnerships to get you more money from the leads you sell to them.
Apply to Leadworks affiliate program here
7. Trupanion
Trupanion has to be the simplest pet insurance firm in the world.
They only sell one plan and it’s for cats and dogs with 90% coverage and zero payout caps and they pay vet bills directly.
Plain and simple, the way pet lovers rarely find in a pet insurance plan.
The affiliate terms are just as simple. You earn a flat fee of $25 USD per qualified lead.
Section 2 of the Trupanion affiliate agreement defines a qualified lead as someone who applies for pet insurance and provides payment details to “facilitate conversion” whether they purchase or not.
The referral period is 30 days for someone to complete that application.
Trupanion reviews on all major review sites including the BBB (where they’re A+ rated ) show the love of pets Trupanion has and that they honor claims.
The affiliate program is run on Impact.com and there is support provided by the Trupanion team.
Sign up to the Trupanion affiliate program here
8. Optimal Travel
Optimal Travel specializes in medical travel insurance for people traveling to and from Canada.
The affiliate program would be suited to travel websites with an older audience or a health condition-specific travel blog.
An example of that could be a blog like Campingwithdiabetes.ca which at time of writing is available. (.ca is Canada’s top URL btw)
As a partner with Optimal Travel, you can let your readers, viewers or followers get competitive quotes online for free while the Optimal team makes sure the fine print of the policies is compatible.
The team are all experienced and licensed agents and they are partnered with some of the biggest Canadian travel insurance brands around. Those include:
- Blue Cross Travel
- Tour Med Travel
- Allianz Travel
- GMS Travel
- TuGo Travel
- Manulife Travel
- Travel Guard
Insurance coverage is available for all Canada provinces including Quebec and the staff speak English and Canadian French and the website has both languages too.
In terms of referral fees, that’s listed as “industry-leading” and could mean anything.
Like a lot of private affiliate programs in the personal finance space, key information is locked down tight until you’re approved. That can be the same on some affiliate networks too.
Information on how to partner with OptimalTravel.ca is available here
9. International Insurance
The International Insurance Group have one of the higher paying insurance affiliate programs for Canada and around the world.
However, it’s a team of brokers and their expertise is (as the name suggests) international and not just Canada.
But, there is potential if you take the right angle. That’s to be connected with the Canadian Expat community.
Take a look at TheCanadianExpat.com and you’ll see how a site like this can be monetized with international insurance products and a string of other travel and employment advice expats need.
For any digital nomads from Canada, Internationalinsurance.com could be the better partner for an expat blog or a podcast.
The affiliate program uses a pay-per-sale structure with the average ‘agent’ starting at 15%.
Rates start at 10% going up to 30% based on performance but as an affiliate (unlicensed to advise on insurance products), you can expect the commission to be 10% of the plans sold.
Apply to the International Insurance affiliate program here
10. Visitors Coverage
The Visitors Coverage affiliate program is suitable to anyone regardless of experience and you don’t even need a website to get started. Social media could be enough if your fans, followers or subscribers are a suitable match.
To be suitable, take a look through their products and their info pages – in particular, this one. From there, you’ll see they cover travel insurance for athletes.
If you’re working with travel affiliate programs in Canada such as Ski vacation resorts, snowboarding holidays or other winter sports in the Northern part of Canada, there’s a good chance that Visitors Coverage would be a good match.
The program is privately run with commissions being paid per sale and based on the volume of business you can generate. In other words, send them quality leads.
In return, you get tracking tools to monitor and improve your performance with commissions paid once you reach the $100 minimum threshold.
Payments are made in the first week of the month 30-days after sales are made.
Apply to the Visitors Coverage affiliate program here
11. Property Protection Insurance with Insure Stays
This program can be confusing because of the number of companies involved. Research the insurance market enough and you’ll find these complicated setups and partnerships common practice.
Let’s try to explain this…
Protection Brands, LLC are a tech startup company (founded in 2017) and they power the software used on RentalGuardian.com and that’s part of Insure Stays.
Broken down, the components involved are
- Protection Brands, LLC is the software company
- Rental Guardian is the lead generation website
- Insure Stays are the insurance provider
- The TERN Financial Group underwrite the insurance policies and they’re a coverholder for Lloyd’s banking group.
The insurance product offered is tailored for vacation homeowners renting properties to guests for up to 30 days at a time.
There’s only one product with two options. One is damage protection cover up to $1,500 of accidental damage protection and the other covering up to $3,000 worth of contents damage.
There is the option for $5,000 cover for US properties, but for vacation properties in Canada and other countries, upper limits on claims are $3,000.
The damage protection plan is designed to protect against accidental damage to things such as televisions, or to cover the cost of carpet cleaning should a red wine stain the newly laid carpet, among other accidents that can happen.
See this page for full details on the product you’d be promoting to vacation businesses in Canada.
When accidents happen, property managers need to either cover the cost or keep a customers deposit and/or invoice for the damage.
The damage protection cover prevents awkward conversations between property managers and renters as up to $3,000 of cover can be arranged with claims filed and the process managed entirely online.
This is Insure Stays best-selling insurance plan and affiliates are paid per quote, not per sale.
The affiliate program is managed by Protection Brands, the software company powering RentalGuardian.com.
12. Insurance Hotline
Insurance Hotline is a classic lead generation business but on a grander scale. The affiliate program will pay you for the leads you generate, then flip those leads to their broker chain in real-time.
That’s the basics of how you’ll make money with the Insurance Hotline affiliate program.
The business has been doing this since 1994 and by phone, so it’s safe to say they’ve moved with the times.
More importantly, they do provide a good value service to Canadian residents.
They are powered by the same technology that powers most major comparison sites. That’s Applied Systems, which acquired the former Compu-Quote in 2012 to expand into Canada.
The service compares 30 insurance providers returning the lowest quote available.
To find out which insurance provider can fulfill the quote, an email and phone number is needed. That lead is then passed to a broker to move the sale along, at which point Insurance Hotline generates a referral fee.
As an affiliate for Insurance Hotline, you’ll earn a share of the revenue generated.
The affiliate program is privately run, provides tracking tools, referral links, and marketing banners.
