Life insurance
Two questions decide almost everything: how much, and for how long. Term insurance answers both cheaply and honestly, and for most Canadian families it is the whole answer.
Enough, for long enough
The arithmetic is not complicated. Add what you owe, add the years of income your household would need, subtract what you already have through work, and that is roughly the number. The part that takes judgement is the term: long enough to carry the mortgage and the youngest child to independence, and not a year longer than you will pay for.
We are licensed for life and health across Canada, and we are paid the same regardless of which insurer wins the case.
What it covers
Term life
A fixed amount for a fixed number of years at a fixed price. Ten, twenty or thirty years. It is the least glamorous product in the industry and the right one for most people under fifty.
Permanent and whole life
Coverage that does not end, with a cash value that builds. It earns its place in estate planning, in funding a shareholder agreement, and where there is a lifelong dependant. It is not a substitute for term insurance on a young family.
Critical illness
A lump sum on diagnosis of a covered condition. Canadian public health care pays for the treatment. It does not pay your mortgage while you are off work for eight months, and it does not cover the drugs, the travel or the parking.
Disability
Income replacement if you cannot work. Statistically far more likely than death before sixty-five, and the coverage most people assume their employer already provides in full. Read the definition of disability in your group booklet.
Group top-up
Employer coverage is usually one or two times salary and it stops the day you leave. We size a personal policy to sit on top of it, so a job change does not become a coverage change.
Beneficiaries and Québec
A named beneficiary keeps the proceeds out of probate. In Québec, naming a spouse as beneficiary is irrevocable unless you specify otherwise, which is a genuine trap for people who move to Montréal and reuse an old form.
What it does not cover
An honest policy is read by its exclusions too. These are the ones that cause the most surprises.
- Suicide within the first two policy years, in the standard Canadian contract.
- Material misstatements on the application. The two-year incontestability clause exists for a reason.
- Conditions you were diagnosed with before a critical illness policy started.
A twenty-minute call gets you a number you can defend. No medical needed to have that conversation.
Tell us your province. The rest follows.
A ten minute request, a named broker, and an answer that starts with what your province already covers.