When Ottawa unveiled its new National Anti-Fraud Strategy earlier this month, it clarified that the first wave of measures would focus on banks – not insurers. But according to Bryan Gast (pictured), national vice president of investigative services at Équité Association, Canada’s insurance industry should see substantial long-term benefits once the framework matures and cross-sector enforcement begins.
“The criminals abide by no jurisdiction,” Gast told Insurance Business Canada. “Doesn’t matter if it’s municipal or regional or provincial or federal, they are preying on a variety of sectors, and all they care about is finding opportunities to defraud or commit financial crime.”
The new Financial Crimes Agency, expected to be legislated by spring 2026, will lead enforcement of complex fraud and money-laundering cases. While its early work will target banks, Gast said its eventual reach will inevitably extend to insurers, who confront many of the same organized crime groups exploiting financial systems across Canada.
“I know it’s starting with the banks,” he said, “but as it evolves, there’s going to be connectivity between all sectors, private and public – particularly the banks and the insurance industry.”
That connectivity, Gast emphasized, could be transformative. By pooling intelligence and referrals across financial services, the new agency will help investigators map organized networks that cross traditional sector boundaries. The same criminal groups behind staged auto collisions, synthetic identities, and payment scams often move money through multiple channels – including both banking and insurance claims.
Équité Association – which evolved from investigative and analytic divisions once housed under the Insurance Bureau of Canada – was created precisely to confront those shared threats. Gast, a 30-year veteran of the Ontario Provincial Police before joining the organization, said he was struck by how seriously the property and casualty industry takes the fight against fraud.
“They created a single entity, naming it Équité Association, with the sole mandate of combating insurance crime,” he said. “Just that initiative of creating Équité to combat this really showed me, from my vantage point, that they were serious.”
That seriousness has fostered collaboration with law enforcement and other financial sectors. Équité already works with the Canadian Bankers Association through groups such as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, building relationships that Gast expects will strengthen under the federal plan. As the Financial Crimes Agency begins operating, data-sharing between investigators in banking and insurance could accelerate the identification of “the spiders of the network” – the organizers who coordinate cross-sector fraud schemes.
For Gast, the core value of the national strategy is its potential to target organized crime rather than isolated incidents. “By removing organized crime and the financial impacts that it has on everybody (because that’s all that drives them – money), it definitely benefits all, not only [in terms of] public safety, but financially as well,” he said.
In the short term, insurers are unlikely to face new compliance requirements under the federal plan. But the emerging architecture – particularly the intelligence-sharing and investigative capacities of the Financial Crimes Agency – positions the sector for deeper involvement. As federal consultations proceed in 2026, insurance organizations are expected to be invited into working groups or referral partnerships focused on complex financial crime.
Gast described this as a natural evolution: the same analytical tools insurers use to detect fraudulent claims mirror those banks deploy to flag suspicious transactions. “Targeting the same organized crime groups” through a shared enforcement lens will close critical gaps that criminals exploit when they move across industries, he said.
The alignment of government, banks, and insurers under a national anti-fraud framework signals a cultural shift in how financial crime is addressed in Canada. For decades, fragmented jurisdictional boundaries limited cooperation. Gast sees the new plan – even if it starts small – as a chance to correct that structural weakness.
“There’s going to be connectivity between all sectors,” he repeated, underscoring that the federal initiative’s long-term strength lies in integration rather than regulation.
For now, insurers remain observers. But as Ottawa builds the agency and refines the National Anti-Fraud Strategy, the groundwork is being laid for an environment where fraud intelligence, investigative expertise, and public-private coordination converge.
