CLHIA puts 2025 health benefits at $54.7 billion, with prescription drugs taking the largest slice
Group plans carried 92 percent of health insurance purchased in Canada in 2025 and 68 percent of all life and health insurance products sold.
In the 2026 edition of Canadian Life and Health Insurance Facts, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) reported that insurers paid $54.7bn in health benefits over the year, up 4.1 percent, and managed private pension assets of over $470bn.
Total benefits across life, health and retirement reached $157bn, 10 percent more than the previous year, or more than $430m a day.
Health premiums totalled $69.4bn and life premiums $32.7bn.
Prescription drugs took the largest share of health benefits at $18.1bn, which CLHIA put at 40 percent of all prescription drug spending in Canada.
Dental followed at $12.2bn, with mental health at $1.1bn and physiotherapy at $1.3bn.
Supplementary health benefits totalled $42.5bn across 27 million individuals, and disability benefits $10.5bn across 11 million.
Claims for paramedical services, including physiotherapy and mental health, rose 9 percent.
Drug claims grew by about 7 percent in 2025.
Drugs for inflammatory conditions, diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer accounted for over a third of all drug benefits paid, the factbook said, citing the Express Scripts 2026 drug trends report.
“Most Canadians don’t think of health benefits as part of the healthcare system,” said Stephen Frank, president and CEO of CLHIA, in the association’s release.
The release said 27 million Canadians use their benefits for prescriptions, mental health support, physiotherapy, and disability coverage, which Frank said gets them care earlier and eases pressure on the public system.
High-cost drug inflation outpaced the Consumer Price Index for 2025 by almost 400 percent, according to the factbook.
The 21 member companies of the Canadian Drug Insurance Pooling Corporation provided Extended Policy Protection Plans to almost 19,000 small and medium-sized employers with at least one employee whose annual drug costs exceeded $10,000.
The framework covered almost 44,000 employees and their families, eliminated over $1.12bn in out-of-pocket expenses, and made 60 new high-cost drugs available during the year.
CLHIA members managed over $470bn for more than 9 million group retirement plan members and over $210bn across more than 3 million individual plans.
Group plan members received $57.7bn of the $83.8bn in retirement benefits paid in 2025, with individual plans receiving more than $26.1bn.
Over 85 percent of small and medium-sized businesses offering group retirement savings plans provide RRSPs and TFSAs through life and health insurers.
Joint investigations between insurers rose 150 percent from 2024, alerts shared through the provider registry rose 50 percent, and actionable alerts drawn from de-identified claims data rose 31 percent.
Data from over 205 million claims generated more than 17,000 alerts for potential fraud, and more than 750 alerts involving over 1,000 entities were recorded in CLHIA’s alert registry.
Insurers held nearly $1.3tn in assets in Canada and $1.6tn internationally at the end of 2025, with 90 percent of assets in long-term investments and a total capital ratio of 136 percent against a regulatory supervisory target of 100 percent.
Canadian holdings included $108bn in provincial, territorial and municipal government bonds, $25bn in federal government bonds, and $51bn in domestic infrastructure.
The industry contributed $12.7bn in federal and provincial taxes and employed more than 180,000 Canadians.
