ING Canada’s Insurance Arm Becomes Intact Insurance

Under Dutch ownership, it carried the name of its financial giant parent. As a wholly-owned Canadian company, the former ING Insurance Company of Canada will be known as Intact Insurance, the new company announced this afternoon.

The new name—its logo is a simple wordmark bracketed in red—is a step away from its former entity in more ways than one, Gilles Gratton, Intact’s vice president of corporate communications, told CI today. It reflects the company’s new independence and also serves as a promise to make consumers “intact” again after a claim. “We felt it was important not [just] to tell the consumer who we were,” he said. The red brackets in the logo “are the notion of protection for our clients,” he added, noting that they also reflect the fact that insurance events and the claims process “are like a parentheses in your life.” The brackets are also reminiscent of the Insurance Broker Association of Canada’s “blanket” logo.

Louis Gagnon, president of Intact Insurance, stressed that the new name’s focus on consumers. “Insurance is not about things,” he said in a company statement unveiling the branding. “It is about people, about people who lose something they care about. Our new name is our promise.”

Gratton says that promise will be enough to soothe the anxieties of any clients/policyholders who preferred having a policy with a global company. “We’re still the largest P&C insurer in Canada,” he says, noting that “ING was not an in-your-face brand. It was sold by brokers. Those who buy through brokers are looking for advice from the broker, and the [name] is not as important as other brands, where you are selling direct to consumers.” Gratton said that Intact would continue to sell its products only through the broker channel.

Business will continue as usual on other fronts, too. Following the company’s acquisition by institutional and retail investors last week, it has no plans to downsize. “Our strategy is the strategy of growth,” Gratton said. “We are growth-minded and at this point in the cycle, we [will] keep on moving forward. [There are] and no lay-offs considered at all.”

The company plans to rollout its new branding to both brokers and consumers in the coming weeks.

This story was originally published by Canadian Insurance Top Broker.