Sixty-one per cent (61%) of Canadian small business owners currently operate with no business insurance coverage at all, according to Zensurance's fifth annual Small Business Confidence Index, based on a survey of 1,000 owners, entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals conducted in June 2026.
That figure is striking - but brokers using it in client conversations or market commentary should understand what it does and does not mean. The 61% uninsured rate is essentially unchanged from the 62.1% Zensurance's own 2025 survey recorded a year ago. The real coverage gap story happened in 2025, when uninsured rates jumped from 33.6% to 62.1% in a single year. This year's number represents stabilisation at an elevated level, not a continuation of the same steep climb.
Zensurance's release framed the gap as having "widened significantly" since 2024, when 33% of small businesses lacked coverage. That is accurate as a two-year comparison but the jump was concentrated in 2025. For brokers citing this data in proposals or client outreach, the accurate framing is that uninsured rates among Canadian small businesses nearly doubled in 2025 and have since held roughly flat - a different picture from one of continuing deterioration.
Business confidence has declined alongside the coverage gap. The index records confidence at 49% this year, down from 58% in 2025 and 70% in 2024. Nearly half of respondents said they had considered closing permanently at some point in 2026, and four in five reported operating with three months of cash reserves or less. Danish Yusuf, Zensurance's CEO and founder, framed insurance as one of the few levers owners can pull in an environment where tariffs, inflation and economic uncertainty remain outside their control.
Zensurance conducted the survey through Pollfish, an online panel platform, among 1,000 self-selected Canadian adults aged 18 to 64 who identified as self-employed. Zensurance's own release noted that a probability sample of the same size would carry a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points "for comparison purposes only" - language that acknowledges this is not a probability sample. Five years of consistent directional results from the same methodology, combined with corroborating data from unrelated surveys on small business risk exposure, support treating the broad trend as real. But brokers citing the specific 61% to clients or prospects should characterize it as directional survey data from an insurance provider with a commercial interest in the topic, not as a precise, independently verified national statistic.
The most actionable data in the survey is not the 61% itself but the reasons uninsured owners gave for going without coverage. Of uninsured respondents, 29% said they do not think they need insurance, 38% said they do not face the kinds of risks it covers, and 22% said their business has no risk at all. None of those responses describe a business owner who has priced coverage and found it unaffordable. They describe a business owner who has not yet had the right conversation about what they are actually exposed to.
That is a sales and education gap, not primarily an affordability problem - and it points directly at where a broker's prospecting conversation should start. An uninsured owner who believes their business carries no risk is not a price objection to overcome; they are a risk education conversation waiting to happen. Customer non-payment for completed work was the top risk concern among all respondents at 29%, followed by cyberattacks or data breaches at 14% and theft or vandalism at 9%. A broker who opens with "what would it cost your business if a client refused to pay a completed contract?" is starting from a concern the prospect has already identified rather than one the broker is introducing.
British Columbia recorded the highest share of owners who had considered closing permanently this year at 57%, compared with 39% in Alberta. Atlantic Canada owners were significantly more likely to cite fuel and gas prices as a pressure point at 75%, against a national average of 58%. Manitoba and Saskatchewan respondents recorded the highest uninsured rate among regions, at 68% - seven points above the national figure. For brokers working those markets, the data suggests a concentration of uninsured exposure that is above average and that the reasons behind it are more likely to be perception-based than price-based.
