Minutes away from elective surgery, Eric Blondeel realized he wasn’t insured if he died on the operating table.
Lying on a hospital gurney, Blondeel used the cell phone he still had with him to google where he could purchase some type of last-minute life insurance.
“I wasn’t able to find anything, so I started checking on the chances I could possibly die within the next couple of hours,” says the Waterloo chemical engineering alumnus. “It was an orthopedic surgery but I was going to be under full general anesthetic, which I’d never been before, so I was a bit nervous.”
Blondeel’s 2020 operation at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener was successful but his experience with feeling vulnerable – married with a mortgage he had recently left a job that provided group coverage – led him to co-found Samos Insurance, headquartered in Waterloo.
See Filling a gap in the marketplace for full story.