Industry Expertise

Équité Association (Équité) was founded in April 2021, to help protect Canadians and contribute to a more equitable world by tackling insurance crime. As a national not-for-profit organization, Équité Association supports Canadians to fight fraud by using advanced analytics, intelligence best practices, and coordinated investigations.

Fraud Prevention Month is an opportunity for Canadians to learn more about the alarming rise in insurance crime in Canada, particularly auto theft. Équité Association works with our members to protect Canadians from insurance crime. Whether stolen vehicles or staged accidents, there is always a victim, and this type of crime can have devastating financial, physical, and emotional consequences.

Last year, Équité Association investigators and partners recovered over 1,170 vehicles at the Port of Montreal valued at $63M, breaking the previous year’s record of most recovered vehicles.

According to Bryan Gast, Vice President of Investigative Services at Équité Association, a significant surge in catalytic converter thefts in Canada and across borders is due to the precious metals contained in catalytic converters. “Thieves are more interested in the precious metals within the catalytic converter than they are in the part itself. The value of palladium, rhodium, and platinum, all contained in a catalytic converter, continues to surpass the value of gold,” says Gast.

Eradicating insurance fraud is a journey and, in April of 2021, the industry took a monumental step forward by establishing Équité Association: a single, unified, industry-wide organization focused on preventing and detecting insurance fraud. Stepping beyond their role as competitors in the marketplace, the industry is collaborating in an unprecedented way to help create safer communities for all Canadians.

If you, like many other Canadians, own an F150 pickup truck, you have likely heard some sobering statistics on how popular this vehicle series is among thieves. Each year, this vehicle appears on Équité Association’s annual Top 10 Most Stolen Vehicles List, along with the Honda CR-V, Lexus RX series and other cars that span affordable and luxury categories.

Équité plays a role in these task forces by sharing as much information and intelligence as possible on behalf of the insurance industry. Équité is a member-funded organization: its member insurers are directly invested in protecting their good customers from bad actors and in finding a solution to insurance crime and fraud in Canada.

Here at Équité Association, our Fraud Analytics Solutions & Technology (FAST) team has been working hard to develop and implement our analytics platform, the first of its kind in Canada. As we inch closer to this milestone achievement, I have been thinking about the increasing importance of data integrity and the role of cyber security both for our organization and for our members.

September 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada – a day where we honour the survivors and those who never returned home from residential schools, as well as their families and communities. As an organization whose values are centered around social justice, Équité Association will be devoting this day to learning more about Indigenous history in Canada, treaties, land claims, and the heart-breaking residential school system.

It is estimated that, each year, thefts of cargo alone cost the Canadian economy several billions of dollars. In fact, Équité Association recovered $16.8M worth of stolen cargo last year alone through its cargo program, the highest amount to date. “We're on track to break records in all categories for theft,” says Wayne Hummel, a cargo and auto theft investigator with Équité. More than half of Canada’s cargo thefts occur in Ontario – Mississauga and Brampton have some of the highest losses for North America.