Wawanesa Insurance is rolling out a free wildfire risk tool for homeowners, positioning the pilot around prevention at a time when wildfire exposure is reshaping the Canadian property market.
The insurer has partnered with climate technology firm Climative to launch the platform, which generates wildfire risk scores, energy performance insights, and prioritized recommendations for property owners.
Wawanesa is positioning the pilot as a step toward prevention rather than claims response, routing it to homeowners through brokers rather than keeping the risk-scoring technology internal to underwriting.
Federally regulated insurers in Canada have been operating under the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions' Guideline B-15 on Climate Risk Management since it took effect for the largest institutions at fiscal year-end 2024, with all other federally regulated insurers required to comply by fiscal year-end 2025.
The guideline directs institutions to understand and mitigate the impact of climate-related risks on their business models, maintain governance and risk management practices suited to those risks, and remain financially and operationally resilient through severe but plausible climate scenarios.
Wawanesa, like other federally regulated insurers, operates under B-15, and has tied its broader climate reporting to the guideline — its first integrated report, published in June, was developed with reference to it.
That regulatory pressure has a technical counterpart. The Canadian Institute of Actuaries released a wildfire risk guide for P&C insurers earlier this year, with findings pointing to risk concentration in high-hazard zones across the country — the kind of property-level detail that tools like Climative's are designed to translate into homeowner-facing action.
Wawanesa describes itself as the first insurer to bring this type of resource to Canadians. That claim is accurate for a specific category: a free, AI-driven wildfire tool delivered directly to homeowners by a Canadian insurer.
It is narrower once the comparison widens to wildfire risk-scoring technology generally, which is already used at scale on the underwriting side of the business by insurers elsewhere.
ZestyAI, a US-based AI risk platform, has built wildfire scoring tools adopted by a large share of California's insurance market, and has more recently expanded into AI tools that help insurers track competitor filings and rate strategy.
The distinction that holds for Wawanesa is distribution: putting risk-scoring technology directly into a homeowner's hands as a free planning tool, rather than keeping it internal to underwriting, is the genuinely uncommon part of this pilot in the Canadian market specifically.
Climative builds its risk scores by combining property-specific data with information supplied directly by users. The output includes a wildfire risk score, an energy performance assessment, and a list of recommended actions ranked by impact.
Climative CEO Winston Morton said the goal is to remove uncertainty from homeowners' decision-making around mitigation.
"Homeowners want to know exactly what measures will make a meaningful difference when it comes to reducing their wildfire risk," Morton said. "Together with Wawanesa, we're removing the guesswork by providing easy-to-implement actions they can take with confidence."
Access to the tool is not open to all Wawanesa members. It runs exclusively through a limited set of broker partners — Western Financial Group and Westland Insurance — with members in select regions able to use the platform through these arrangements.
Western Financial Group CEO Grant Ostir said the model gives advisors a direct role in client risk conversations.
"Brokers play a critical role in helping clients understand and act on risk," Ostir said. "Innovations like Climative give our advisors a powerful new way to engage customers with practical insights that strengthen resilience and build long-term trust."
Westland Insurance's Executive Vice President of Client Experience and Digital, Cari Watson, framed the tool similarly for her own client base.
"At Westland, we see firsthand how climate risks are impacting the communities we serve across Canada," Watson said. "Tools like Climative help turn complex risk into clear, practical actions, giving our teams and clients greater confidence to prepare for what's ahead. This kind of innovation strengthens the role of brokers as trusted advisors and supports more resilient homes and communities."
Wawanesa President and CEO Evan Johnston tied the pilot to a shift toward prevention.
"Climate change is reshaping the risks we collectively face, and addressing them requires a stronger focus on prevention," Johnston said. "Climative represents an important step forward, providing our members with the information they need to build resilience. As a mutual, we're focused on the long-term interests of our members, and this pilot reflects that."
The initial rollout targets regions with elevated wildfire risk, allowing Wawanesa and Climative to gauge how homeowners interact with the tool before any wider release.
Results from this phase will inform whether the platform extends to other climate-related risks over time. Wawanesa has not specified a timeline for moving beyond the pilot, has not said whether brokers outside Western Financial Group and Westland Insurance will gain access, and has not disclosed the financial terms of its arrangement with Climative.
The Climative pilot is the latest addition to a program with a multi-year spending record behind it.
Wawanesa's Climate Champions program commits $2.5 million annually to organizations and individuals working on climate adaptation, and since 2024 its Local Grants stream alone has awarded more than $488,000 to community-based projects, including climate-vulnerability mapping and emergency planning work by the Couchiching Conservancy in Carden, Ontario, and stormwater management education led by OBV SCABRIC in Sainte-Martine, Quebec.
The program has also funded direct wildfire mitigation work. In April 2025, Wawanesa distributed more than $150,000 in Community Wildfire Prevention Grants to 12 grassroots groups, funding vegetation management and the installation of spark screens at campsites, and contributed $75,000 to Thompson Rivers University to support research into how communities engage with FireSmart wildfire reduction programs.
That cycle built on a similar round the year before, when Wawanesa provided $150,000 in Community Wildfire Prevention Grants split evenly among 10 organizations at $15,000 each.
Since Climate Champions launched in 2023, Wawanesa has directed more than $480,000 into local climate grants and over $660,000 into wildfire prevention work across 46 communities, with a youth innovation track now funding projects ranging from green hydrogen production to passive de-icing systems for cold-climate power infrastructure at $30,000 per project.
