More financial companies offer gender reassignment benefits
A growing number of banking and financial services companies in Canada are offering gender reassignment benefits to their clients and employees as part of their core health coverage.
Scotiabank announced it would add gender reassignment benefits for employees in Canada and the United States starting on June 1, by covering the costs of procedures like rhinoplasty, electrolysis (hair removal), voice training and surgery, as well as facial feminization and masculinization.
This is part of the broader company health benefits plan that provides coverage up to a lifetime limit of about $50,000 per employee and their dependents. The company stated that that it was looking to support trans people on their own personal gender affirmation journey.
Dominic Cole-morgan, senior vice president of total rewards at Scotiabank, said that the move came after consulting employees about benefit offerings. The bank found there was a gap when it came to providing supports to employees who were transitioning.
“So, we obviously talked to our providers who were extremely helpful in this and decided that there’s no point waiting for this — now is the right time to do it,” said Colemorgan, adding that the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive from both within and outside of the company.
“What we want is every company doing this. You want this to become the norm,” he said.
While traditionally viewed as conservative organizations, other major Canadian financial services employers have opened their benefits to a more inclusionary approach: Starting this year, Manulife Financial Corp. added fully covered gender affirmation benefits for Canadian and U.S. staff to cover surgical procedures like Adam’s apple reduction surgeries, cheek or breast augmentation, as well as non-surgical supports like voice training.
Starting on June 30, insurance agency Green Shield Canada also plans to include gender affirmation offerings in all of its standard benefit packages, reimbursing the costs of surgeries that are not already covered in provincial and territorial health insurance programs.
Other banks, like TD Bank Group, CIBC, and Bank of Montreal have added gender reassignment to their general medical benefits plans for employees as well. TD was the first Canadian bank offering gender affirmation benefits, introducing them in regular medical coverage in 2008.
In TD’S program, employees and their dependents have 100 per cent coverage for surgical costs that fall outside provincial health-care coverage, like physician fees, hospitalization, voice surgery and psychiatric therapy costs.
Sun Life Financial Inc. extended its own health coverage for transitioning clients in 2019. The new plan added to the core benefits that paid for basic surgical procedures not covered by provincial or territorial plans, and now covers the costs of procedures that align feminine or masculine features to the gender the client is transitioning to.
This trend is addressing a need that workers in the LGBTQ2S+ community have been voicing for a while. In 2015, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union advocated in a report that gender reassignment has played an undisputed role in generating positive outcomes. The report further addresses that these procedures are not “cosmetic” or exist for the “mere convenience of the patient,” but are medically necessary for transitioning individuals.
Morningstar, Inc. identified the gaps in coverage for transitioning Canadians in a February report about the costs of being transgendered in Canada, noting that hormone therapies and counselling are often out-of-pocket expenses. Visits with psychologists and counsellors could run between $100 and $300 an hour.
The Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA) created an industry working group assessing the insurance needs of Canadians undergoing gender reassignment. A spokesperson told Postmedia News that several member companies announced initiatives allowing employers to support employees who incurred gender reassignment costs. They were also exploring short-term disability benefits for surgeries and recovery times during gender affirmation procedures, just as they would for any surgical procedure.
Cole-morgan hopes that more companies can identify these blind spots and push to offer more inclusive benefits packages to support as many people as possible.
“This isn’t something you want to be the only person doing, because actually that only benefits a very small population. You want everyone to be doing this as well,” he said.