After building a presence in Europe, French insurtech unicorn Alan has come overseas and set its sights on bringing some more competition to Canada’s health insurance market.
Like telecommunications and banking, Canadian health insurance is dominated by just a few major players, which Alan’s general manager of Canada Mark Goad said often charge “exorbitant fees” for coverage.
“[Alan] saw something that we see in a lot of Canadian markets—[a] highly concentrated oligopoly.”
Mark Goad,
Alan
“Canadians, we know we pay a lot for telco,” Goad told BetaKit in an exclusive interview. “We know we pay a lot for banking. You also get absolutely hosed on health insurance.”
Alan hopes to help change that, starting with the launch of its first product for the Canadian market—digital group health insurance geared towards tech startups and small businesses that it says is cheaper and easier to access than comparable services from its competitors.
The announcement comes six months after Alan secured a licence from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to sell health insurance in Canada. According to Alan, this made it the country’s first new health insurance carrier in nearly 70 years.
The company claims its new offering lets employers buy and manage group health insurance for employees entirely online within minutes, without brokers, phone calls, paper forms, or hidden costs, at 15 percent fees—half the cost of the average incumbent insurer—with no multi-year lock-ins.
Alan intends to offer health insurance coverage across three types of plans to start, ranging from $86 to $149 CAD per person monthly, that include prescription, dental, and paramedical needs. Alan’s mid-tier, $100 option is currently available to businesses in Ontario and Alberta, with the rollout of its premium and more basic plans to follow shortly. Pending regulatory approval, Alan intends to launch the product in British Columbia and Québec later this year.
Founded in 2016, Alan sells health insurance to employers and provides virtual healthcare to their employees via its app. Workers can chat with doctors, order prescription glasses, and access preventive care content.
Goad described Canada as “a big bet” for Alan, and said the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board is “an important part of that story.” Teachers’ Venture Growth (TVG) led Alan’s Series E financing in 2022, and the pension fund supported the company’s Series F round last year.
When TVG first invested, Alan had seen success in France, Spain, and Belgium, and was looking at more countries when Canada emerged as a potential target. “They saw something that we see in a lot of Canadian markets—[a] highly concentrated oligopoly,” Goad said.
Goad, who was Alan’s first Canadian employee, previously served as COO at Toronto and Halifax-based healthtech startup Curv Health and associate at OMERS Ventures.
Alan aims to drive preventive care, something Goad worked on during his time at Curv. “We got blocked at every channel, through the brokers and the folks that had the system up today,” he said. When Goad was presented with the opportunity to build Alan’s Canadian presence from insurance down to healthcare, he said he leapt at the chance.
Most recently valued at $6.3 billion CAD, Alan has raised more than $1 billion in total funding and amassed 700,000 individual members across 35,000 business customers. It is currently generating $780 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and growing 50 percent year-over-year.
“This thing is a beast that no Canadian’s ever heard of, and that’s fine with us right now,” Goad said. “We’re trying to change that slowly.”
According to Goad, Alan’s size, balance sheet, experience, and tight governance controls have enabled the company to move quickly in Canada. “We can go to these big markets that have scary regulatory and capital requirements, we have the balance sheet to go enter them and we can shake them up, because, frankly, the challenges of these systems are so similar,” he said.
RELATED: Long-life startup NiaHealth exits stealth with $2.5 million in pre-seed funding
Goad noted that Alan grew to over $100 million in ARR in Belgium in five years, and said the company’s financial plan for Canada is “equally aggressive.” To support its Canadian expansion, the company intends to grow its local workforce to 50 over the next four years.
Alan intends to start small in Canada with tech startups, and will focus first on providing quality service and building customer champions before moving up market, a playbook the company has followed in other countries. “We know that buyer because we are that buyer,” Goad said.
Alan’s Canadian clients include Data Loft, Upside Robotics, and Vantage Developments. Goad expects Alan to move into white-collar work and other industries over time.
Goad sees an opportunity down the road for Alan to expand beyond just health into other adjacent insurance programs. But for now, he said Alan is “just excited to add another option.”
“I think that’s what Canadians deserve,” Goad said. “I wish it’d be easy to do in some of the other industries that we care a lot about, but we’re very proud to be able to do it in this one.”
Feature image courtesy Alan.