Who Killed Confederation Life? The Inside Story

Who Killed Confederation Life? The Inside Story looks at the fall of one of Canada’s top life insurance companies.

In the book, McQueen chronicles the saga of how and why Confederation  Life was seized by regulators in the summer of 1994. The company, which  had $19 billion in assets and was Canada’s fourth largest life  insurance company, was the single largest life insurance company to fail  in North America, with total losses in the billions.

“This was a seismic event for the insurance industry in Canada  because it spelled the end. In 1994, the year of the collapse, Canadian  life insurance companies had $700 billion of life insurance policies  outside Canada, two-thirds in the U.S. Ever since then, this has been  dropping,” said McQueen.

An earlier McQueen book about the life insurance business in Canada entitled Risky Business was the project which first introduced him to Confederation Life.  Later, in June of 1994, McQueen wrote a two-page spread on the company  for The Financial Post and shortly after that, while on holidays  in France, he learned that the government had seized the company. “That  was when I realized this was my next book.”

Rod McQueen is one of Canada’s top business writers. As a freelance  journalist specializing in corporate Canada, he has been published in  many Canadian magazines. At one time he was based in London, England and  during another period was a correspondent in Washington, D.C. for The Financial Post.

He is the author of six other books: The Moneyspinners, Risky Business, Leap of Faith, Both My Houses (with Sean O’Sullivan), Blind Trust, and The Last Best Hope.