(Quebec) Faced with student associations that promise to fight on all fronts to protect their health insurance, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) is suspending the application of measures that would have had the effect of depriving, from the next school year, hundreds of thousands of students of insurance coverage that has been available for a quarter of a century.
Posted at 3:37 p.m.
The Press revealed Wednesday under the pen of its columnist Marie-Eve Fournier that Desjardins – which covers approximately 95% of the student group insurance market in Quebec – was not going to renew the contracts it holds with 57 student associations due to application of the measures required by the AMF.
Among other things, the AMF asked that membership in a group insurance plan no longer be automatically collected through the school bill. The regulatory and oversight body for the financial sector in Quebec believes that this way of doing things is not fair and does not respect the Insurers Act.
In a press release on Wednesday, the AMF announced “a re-examination of the entire file”. It also claims to set up “a process of consultation and review of the legal framework setting out the obligations of insurers with regard to insurance products offered by student associations”, asks “all interested parties to participate in this consultation and, above all, that “insurers [sursoient] to any decision until this exercise is completed”.
“There are two valid and conflicting objectives here, namely the protection of students who must not be enrolled without their knowledge or against their will in insurance products of which they are unaware or of which they have no need, and accessibility to insurance products that also meet the real needs of students who wish to be able to continue to benefit from them”, declared Louis Morisset, President and CEO of the AMF.
The AMF says it wants to “identify possible solutions to reconcile these two objectives as best as possible”. A report will then be presented to the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard.