Term Life Insurance
Permanent Life Insurance
No Medical Life Insurance Canada
Critical Illness Insurance
Mortgage Life Insurance
Guaranteed Issue Life Insurance
Paying your death benefit is the most important feature of your life insurance policy. The good news is that any life insurance company in Canada is well able to pay any death benefit that they choose to insure, at any time. There’s a variety of reasons for this, the two most important being 1/ The government monitors all life insurance companies quarterly and puts the hammer down on them if they’re not conservative and stable, and 2/ all life insurance companies in Canada belong to Assuris. Assuris is an organization that guarantees (within certain limits) all individual life insurance polices in Canada.
So it’s not size or stability that gets a Canadian life insurance company in our personal top 5 list. Instead, it’s the additional features that sets them apart. Without further ado, here’s our list of top life insurance companies in Canada.
Manulife
Manulife is the largest individual life insurance company in Canada, with operations spanning the globe. They differentiate themselves in two important aspects of their policy:
- They have the best conversion options in the industry. Conversion allows you to exchange your term insurance policy for a permanent policy, and most companies have this. Manulife’s options however far exceed other companies, and any time we’ve done a Manulife conversion for a client they’ve been ecstatic.
- Manulife’s Universal Life policy has the option to invest in the same fund that Manulife invest in themselves. This allows consumers to get an excellent blend of high performance and conservative investments, since Manulife’s picking the investments not you.
Wawanesa
Best service of any life insurance company (based on my opinion and experience). If you want to reach out to a customer service rep who’s friendly, knowledgeable, and actually gets stuff done without bureaucracy, the Wawanesa is the company for you.>/li>
Foresters
Foresters is one of the oldest and most stable life insurance companies in Canada. But their ‘widows and orphans benefits’ service is what sets them apart. Should both parents die, they of course pay the death benefit. However in addition they also pay the guardians of your children $900/month until the kids are 18, then they provide the children with a bursary of $6000/year for 4 years to cover post secondary education costs.
Ivari
Ivari was previously called Transamerica. They were the life insurance company that pioneered brokered life insurance in Canada (prior to that, agents could really only sell for one company). In addition, they’re owned by a reinsurance company which is owned by the folks that do the investing for Canada Pension Plan. Yeah, so Ivari’s profits eventually end up in your CPP benefits when you retire. Can’t get much more Canadian than that.
Equitable Life
This little company that could is now Canada’s largest mutual company. That means that policyholders of certain types of life insurance policies are effectively owners of the company, and participate to an extent in the profits. If you like the sense of being part of a company, then Equitable Life’s for you.
With all that being said, any life insurance company is always well positioned to provide life insurance to consumers so don’t feel confined to this list by any stretch. If there’s something about another life insurance company that you prefer, then don’t hesitate to go with them. If you would like to learn more about which life insurance company and product is right for you please reach out to us. You can also find full reviews of all the top insurance companies in our insurance library.
