Former type Public Fate In liquidation Headquarters Toronto Ceased operations August 11, 1994 | Industry Insurance Defunct 1994 (1994) Founded 1871 | |
Confederation Life Insurance Company, also known as Confederation Life, was a major Canadian insurance company and financial services provider. Its global head office was located in Toronto in what is now the Rogers Building. The company had operations in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Bermuda, and an inactive office in Cuba.
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History
The company was founded in 1871 by John Kay Macdonald (1837–1928) in Toronto, then established operations in the UK in 1906 (with head office at Stevenage, Hertfordshire) and later into the United States with offices in Atlanta.
Macdonald retired in 1920 and was succeeded by Charles Strange Macdonald from 1921-1946 and later John K. Macdonald II from 1946 to 1969.
In 1969, J. Craig Davidson became president and for the first time the firm was no longer led by a member of the Macdonald family.
Demise
Confederation Life was forced into liquidation in 1994. The process began on August 11 of that year. Due to the international operations of the company, the liquidation process was somewhat complex. The company had financial obligations to 260,000 individual policyholders in Canada, and it also had another 1.5 million people who were members of a group insurance plan through the company. During the liquidation process, CompCorp (who was by then called Assuris) was able to guarantee the assets of all policyholders, and the process only cost the compensation fund CA$5 million. The various blocks of business held by the company were taken over by several different Canadian and American insurance companies. The liquidator was KPMG. As of 2010, the process was still ongoing.
This was the third liquidation of an insurance company in Canada, and was followed in 2012 by Union of Canada Life.