Nearly one in four Canadian small business owners, 23%, say they don't currently carry business insurance, according to TD Insurance's newest small business survey, even as 90% reported facing at least one unexpected challenge or setback in the past year and 67% said those pressures have changed how they think about risk.
The survey, conducted by Leger Opinion between July 9 and 21, 2026, among 401 Canadian small business owners with one to 500 employees and up to $5 million in annual revenue, also found 55% couldn't cover an unexpected expense over $10,000 without outside help, and 59% say understanding business insurance is difficult or frustrating.
"As change becomes constant, preparedness may be more important than ever," said Tang Trang, TD Insurance's vice president of small business insurance. "While it's encouraging that most business owners report having business insurance, our findings suggest there is still a gap in understanding how coverage can help support and protect their business as it grows."
TD has now run a version of this small business insurance survey annually since at least 2024, and the pattern across all three years is strikingly consistent rather than evolving.
The 2024 edition found 36% of uninsured owners cited cost as their reason for skipping coverage, with only 32% saying they review their existing policy regularly.
Meanwhile, the 2025 edition found rising expenses climbing as a top concern (32%, up from 29% the year before) and highlighted that more than half of business owners were turning to credit cards, bank loans or family loans in emergencies rather than filing insurance claims.
This year's survey lands on a similar theme from a different angle: 76% of owners agree insurance should be integral to business planning, yet 23% remain uninsured and 24% still view it as a cost to minimize rather than a planning tool. Three years of data pointing at the same intention-action gap suggests this isn't a temporary blip tied to one year's economic conditions, but a structural pattern in how small business owners relate to insurance.
This year's survey drew on 401 respondents through Leger's opinion panel, a smaller sample than some comparable Canadian small business insurance surveys, including Zensurance's 2026 Small Business Confidence Index, which surveyed 1,000 owners and separately found 61% currently operate without any coverage.
That's a considerably higher uninsured rate than TD's 23% figure, and the gap between the two surveys is large enough that it's worth treating both as directional rather than precise, given differences in sample size, panel methodology, and how each survey defines "business insurance" or "small business."
Neither is a probability sample of the kind that would support a precise national percentage, so brokers citing either figure to clients should frame it as one data point among several rather than a settled national statistic.
One of this year's more interesting findings is the confidence gap between insured and uninsured owners: 73% of insured business owners feel positioned to grow and succeed, against 58% of uninsured owners, and insured owners were also more likely to prioritize expansion (63% versus 49%) and technology investment (20% versus 11%).
Growth itself also appears to prompt insurance reviews, with 72% of insured owners saying they reviewed coverage in the past year, and most saying future growth would trigger another review.
That correlation doesn't necessarily mean insurance causes confidence, business owners with more stable finances may simply be more likely to afford both insurance and growth investment, but it's a consistent enough pattern across TD's data to be a useful talking point for brokers positioning coverage as a growth enabler rather than a defensive cost.
For brokers working with small business clients, the practical opportunity in this data is the disconnect between stated intent and actual coverage: 76% say insurance should be integral to planning, yet a substantial share remain uninsured, often because of confusion about what's covered or how much coverage is needed rather than outright refusal to buy.
Given that 87% of respondents reported a significant business change this year, hiring, new markets, new equipment or technology, brokers have a natural, recurring prompt to reach out proactively at these moments rather than waiting for clients to initiate an insurance conversation on their own, since TD's own data suggests growth events are exactly when policy reviews are most likely to happen anyway.
