CoverCheck exists because of a flood, an insurance policy full of gaps, and six months we'd rather forget — crammed into a one-bedroom basement with three kids and two dogs.
Sewer backup. A heavy rainfall had overwhelmed the municipal system in our neighbourhood, and the water came up through the drains before we could do anything. The kitchen was gone. The living room was gone. Half the furniture we'd spent years building up — gone.
We called our insurer that same afternoon, already running through the mental checklist: we had home insurance, we'd always paid on time, we'd never missed a renewal. We figured we were fine.
"We were told our policy didn't cover sewer backup. It was a standard exclusion. It was right there in the contract, buried in page 34 of the fine print — a page neither of us had ever read."
We weren't fine. We were on the hook for over $40,000 in damages. The repair timeline? Six months, minimum. Our Additional Living Expenses (ALE) coverage — the part of your policy that's supposed to pay for temporary housing when your home is uninhabitable — was capped at $1,000 total. We had chosen the cheapest premium available without once asking what we were actually covered for.
Three kids sharing one room. Two dogs with nowhere to run. No kitchen — we ordered food delivery almost every night because cooking wasn't an option, which meant our savings evaporated even faster than the repair bills. The kids had no space to do homework. There was no quiet corner for anyone. It was the worst period of my life — not because of the flood itself, but because every single day was a reminder that we'd chosen a cheap premium over actual protection, and our family was living with that decision, one cramped square foot at a time.
The sewer backup rider that would have covered everything? It costs about $120 a year. Less than $10 a month. We had skipped it — not consciously, not knowingly — but because nobody had ever explained to us what it covered, what we were missing, or what the real-world consequences of that gap would look like.
Our insurer wasn't villainous. The policy wasn't illegal. We just hadn't understood what we were buying. And there was no tool, no simple check, no honest moment where someone had said: "Hey, here's what your policy actually covers — and here's what it doesn't."
After we rebuilt — the house and our finances — we started talking to other homeowners. The patterns were everywhere: people paying premiums for years without ever reading their policy, people who discovered gaps only when they filed a claim, people who assumed "home insurance" meant "fully covered" without understanding the difference between a standard policy and the riders that fill the most common holes.
The information exists. The IBC publishes data. Insurers publish their exclusions. Brokers know the gaps. But none of it reaches regular homeowners in a form they can actually use before something goes wrong.
"CoverCheck is the tool I wish had existed the day I signed my policy. Not to scare people. Not to sell them something. Just to help them understand what they're actually protected against — before they need to find out the hard way."
We built it to be free, honest, and simple. No insurance license required to use it. No sales call waiting at the end. Just a clear, benchmarked picture of where you stand — and what you might want to fix.
Every Canadian homeowner deserves to understand their coverage — not after a flood, not during a claim, but before they ever need it.
It takes 2 minutes. No email, no credit card, no sales call. Just an honest look at where you stand.
Check my coverage — free