Empire Life Insurance Review

Most reviews of this carrier count products. That is not the question worth answering. The question is whether your file belongs at Empire Life at all, and the answer turns on three things: your age, the coverage amount you need, and what is sitting in your medical history.

What follows comes from Empire’s current underwriting documents and from applications actually submitted, not from a product brochure. Where Empire is the right call, this says so. Where it is not, it says that too.

Jump to a section

• Who Empire Life Fits, and Who It Does Not
• How Financially Strong Is Empire Life?
• Empire Life Term Insurance: Six Term Lengths and What Each One Is For
• Term Exchange vs Conversion: Two Rights, Two Different Deadlines
• What Empire Life Underwriting Actually Requires
• Empire Life Permanent Insurance Options
• Guaranteed Life Protect: Empire’s Only No-Medical Policy
• Critical Illness, Disability, and Group Benefits at Empire Life
• How Empire Life Compares to Other Canadian Insurers
• What Empire Life Is Like After the Policy Is Issued
• Empire Life Pros and Cons
• Frequently Asked Questions About Empire Life

Who Empire Life Fits, and Who It Does Not

Empire Life fits relatively healthy applicants who need coverage inside its no-fluid limits. Once there are medical concerns, I typically navigate away.

Let me be precise about what that means, because it is broader than it sounds if I leave it there. I am not saying Empire declines anyone with a medical file. Plenty of controlled, well-documented conditions go through at standard rates. What I mean is that when a file carries cardiac, respiratory, or mental health history, a recent leave from work, or a condition still under investigation, I compare Empire against carriers that may read that specific history more favourably before I submit anything. Sometimes Empire still wins. Often it does not.

I find them generally more conservative than most on any sort of medical concern. Not hostile, not difficult. Careful. If the file is clean and the box is checked off, it moves fast and it usually prices well.

There is a second limitation that catches people off guard. Empire has restrictions on newcomers to Canada that other carriers do not, and they apply to coverage amount, rider access, and rate class. If you are here on a work permit, a study permit, or a post-graduation permit, that is worth knowing before you apply rather than after. I have written separately about life insurance for work permit holders and about coverage options for newcomers, because the rules differ by carrier more than most people expect.

None of that is a verdict on the company. It is a verdict on the match between a carrier and a file, which is a different thing. Empire is one of my most used providers. They are also not my go-to in every scenario, and any broker telling you one carrier wins every case is selling you something.

How Empire Life scores across the factors that actually matter

I am not going to hand you a star rating with nothing behind it. Here is the assessment factor by factor, so you can weigh the ones that apply to your situation and ignore the ones that do not.

Weight those against what you need. Someone who wants a 25-year term and the right to change their mind later should care a lot about the top three rows. Someone managing a health condition should care most about the sixth. Those are two different clients and they should not get the same recommendation, which is the part most carrier reviews skip.

Product availability, rate classes, eligibility, and underwriting outcomes are all subject to Empire Life’s current guidelines and can change. Nothing here is a promise of approval or of a particular price. For context on how the streamlined evidence route works across Canadian carriers generally, see the overview of accelerated underwriting in Canada.

How Financially Strong Is Empire Life?

Empire Life has been writing policies in Canada since 1923, carries an A (high) financial strength rating from Morningstar DBRS as at July 13, 2026, and held capital at 150% of the regulator’s measure as at March 31, 2026, against a required floor of 90%.

When a client sees a name on a quote they do not recognize, here is what I tell them. Life insurance companies in Canada are heavily regulated. There are capital, solvency, reserving and governance requirements they have to meet, and the oversight is serious. Most insurers also transfer part of their risk to reinsurers, which is common market practice and is itself supervised by the regulator.

And most of these companies are old. Empire Life is more than 100 years old. Assumption Life has been around since the early 1900s. Name recognition is a marketing outcome, not a solvency measure.

Company figures as reported by Empire Life and OSFI filings. Ratings and financial positions change and should be confirmed at the time you apply.

What the capital number actually means

LICAT is the test Canadian regulators use to check whether an insurer holds enough capital against the risks on its books. Ninety percent is the hard floor. OSFI expects insurers to set internal targets at 100 percent or better. Empire sits well above both.

Scale shown to 180%. A capital ratio is a measure of financial cushion at a point in time. It is not a prediction and it is not a guarantee of any claim outcome.

“What if Empire gets bought by another company?”

I get this one a lot, usually from clients in their seventies and eighties who have watched a few companies change hands over the years. It is a fair question.

The short version is that a policy is a contract. If a block of business changes hands, the contractual obligations travel with it. That is the whole point of the structure. Empire Life is also an Assuris member, which is the industry-funded protection body that steps in if a Canadian life insurer fails. I have written a fuller explanation of what happens if your life insurance company goes bankrupt, because the answer is more reassuring than most people expect and it is worth understanding before it ever matters.

On scale, Empire is among Canada’s top ten life insurers by total assets based on December 31, 2025 OSFI filings. Not one of the giants, and bigger than most people assume. If you want the full picture of how the market stacks up, I keep a breakdown of the largest life insurance companies in Canada.

Empire Life Term Insurance: Six Term Lengths and What Each One Is For

Empire Life offers six term lengths under its Solution Series shelf: an annually renewable option, then level terms of 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 years. Most Canadian carriers give you 10 and 20 and call it a day.

Empire is pretty good in this market. Under age 45 I find they often come up as one of the more cost-effective options on term. The question then is not really which company. It is how long you actually want the coverage for, given the ages of your kids and what level you need. That is the conversation, and the six-length shelf is what makes it possible to answer it properly instead of rounding to the nearest twenty years.

Pay attention to the issue ages, because they tighten as the term lengthens and that catches people out. You cannot buy a 30-year term at 58.

Bar length shows the initial level-premium period. Issue ages are age nearest. Level terms run $25,000 to $20,000,000, subject to financial underwriting, with a $10,000 minimum at issue ages 66 and above. Per Empire Life’s Solution Series product guide current at the time of writing and subject to change.

The 15 and the 25 are the ones worth pausing on. If you are 38 with a mortgage that has 24 years left, a 20-year term leaves you exposed for four years and a 30-year term has you paying for six years you do not need. That gap is exactly where a 25 earns its place. If you want to work through that properly, I wrote a longer piece on choosing the right term length.

One structural detail nobody mentions until renewal arrives. A Solution 10, 15 or 20 renews into another full term of the same length. A Solution 25 or 30 does not: after the initial term it renews every single year to age 85. If you are buying a long term expecting a gentle step up at the end, that is not what happens.

What Empire Life term insurance actually costs

Here is $500,000 of 20-year coverage for a Canadian non-smoker at standard rates, from a recent survey of fourteen carriers.

Methodology: female and male, ages nearest 30, 40 and 50, $500,000 Solution 20, non-smoker, standard rate class, monthly premium including the annual policy fee. Figures are Empire Life’s own quoted premium, not the lowest in the survey. Marker position shows where Empire ranked among the fourteen carriers quoted at that profile.  Illustrative only, subject to underwriting and change. Your own rate depends on health, build, family history, and driving record.

Watch the marker, because that is the honest part. At 30, Empire sits near the front of a fourteen-carrier field. By 50 it has drifted back. Still competitive, no longer leading. Price position moves with age, coverage amount, term length, sex, and smoking status, and it moves constantly. For a wider view of the market first, I have breakdowns of what a 10-year term costs and what a 20-year term costs across Canadian carriers.

Two coverages, one policy, one policy fee

This is the feature most people have never heard of and it is quietly the reason Empire wins a lot of couples files for me. Empire’s multi-life option covers two people, each with their own separate coverage, on a single policy. Two death benefits, two amounts, potentially two different term lengths, and one policy fee instead of two.

The battle out there seems to be between Empire Life and RBC on term for couples. Empire often comes out ahead, and the reason is not the headline rate. It is that single policy fee. On its own it is a small number. When it is the only thing separating two otherwise identical quotes, small is enough.

Worth being precise about what this is not. Multi-life is not a joint first-to-die policy, which covers two people but pays once and ends. Empire offers both, plus joint last-to-die, and they do very different jobs. I have laid the distinction out properly in this comparison of single life versus joint life policies. Multi-life and joint coverages are limited to two lives and are subject to Empire Life’s current product rules.

Term Exchange vs Conversion: Two Rights, Two Different Deadlines

An Empire Life term policy carries two separate rights that people constantly confuse. An exchange swaps a shorter term for a longer one and must be requested before the seventh coverage anniversary. A conversion turns term coverage into permanent coverage and runs to the policy anniversary nearest age 75. Both skip new medical evidence.

I try to go with companies that give you the opportunity to extend the term longer without requalifying. Empire is one of them, along with RBC and Manulife. Here is why I bring it up. Say we put a smoker into a short ten-year bridge policy, hoping they quit. They do not quit, and then something happens health wise. We want the ability to extend that term longer without them having to prove anything. That right is worth more than a couple of dollars a month on the original quote, and almost nobody asks about it when they are shopping.

Windows illustrate the mechanic, not your contract. Exact eligibility, deadlines, minimum amounts and rate class treatment are set by your policy wording and Empire Life’s rules at the time you ask. Confirm before relying on either right.

The exchange, and what it can actually become

The exchange is the short-horizon safety valve. The new term has to be at least ten years longer than the one you hold, which means the plan you own determines where you can go.

Four conditions all have to be met. The request has to be in before the seventh coverage anniversary. You have to be within the issue ages of the plan you are moving into, which is the one that quietly disqualifies people, since Solution 30 stops issuing at 55. The new term has to be at least ten years longer. And the coverage you hold cannot itself be the product of a previous exchange, because this right is exercisable once per coverage.

The new premium is set at your age nearest using the rates in effect on the day you exchange, so it will cost more than the original policy. It just will not cost you a medical. A preferred or elite rate class carries across only if the new amount still meets the minimum face amount for preferred rates; otherwise standard applies. And because this counts as a continuation of coverage, the suicide and incontestability provisions do not restart.

The conversion, and the part that gets oversold

Term coverage can move into any currently available Empire permanent plan with no medical evidence, up to the policy anniversary nearest age 75. That deadline is the same across the whole Solution Series, including the annually renewable plan. On a joint coverage, the oldest life insured cannot be past age nearest 75.

There is no restriction on which permanent plan you pick, which payment option you choose, or which dividend option you select if it is a participating plan. You can convert part of the coverage rather than all of it. On newer coverages there is also a carry-over route that lets you convert part to permanent and keep the balance as a term rider on the new policy, with at least 40% of the new plan being permanent. That one has an issue-date cutoff attached, so an older policy will not qualify. Worth checking your policy date rather than assuming.

Now the part that gets oversold. Conversion preserves your insurability, not your premium. The permanent policy is priced at your attained age using current rates. And if you hold a preferred or elite rate class on the term, it does not survive the conversion, because Empire does not offer preferred rates on any permanent product. You go to standard. That is not a penalty, it is how the permanent shelf is built, but it catches people who assumed their good health would follow them across. If lifelong coverage is where you think you are heading, understand how guaranteed cash value works before you convert, not after.

The number that makes the deadline real

Here is a live 20-year term policy from my own book, anonymized. Small face amount, taken out on a child.

One real de-identified policy illustration, shown to demonstrate how renewal pricing behaves. Not a quote and not representative of any other case. Renewal rates are set out in the contract and vary by product, age and coverage amount.

Before anyone emails me about the arithmetic: twelve payments of $719.55 come to more than $7,995, and that is not an error. Empire calculates the monthly premium as nine percent of the annual premium, which is standard practice across the industry for the cost of collecting twelve times a year instead of once. Paying monthly costs roughly eight percent more than paying annually. On this policy that gap is about $640 a year at renewal, which is worth knowing before you default to monthly.

The jump itself is not Empire being unreasonable. Every level term in Canada does some version of this, because at renewal the insurer is pricing a much older person with no health evidence. But it is why the exchange window and the conversion deadline are not administrative trivia. They are the two ways out before that number arrives. The same shock catches people on other carriers, which is why I wrote about what to do when your renewal rates skyrocket.

One more mechanic worth flagging, because it changes when the cliff arrives. A Solution 10, 15 or 20 renews into another full term of the same length. A Solution 25 or 30 does not. After the initial term those two renew every single year until the anniversary nearest age 85. If you bought a long term expecting a single step up at the end, that is not what the contract does.

If you took a shorter term because that was what the budget allowed, and especially if you were rated or classified as a smoker, put a reminder in your calendar for coverage year five. That gives you two years of runway to use a right you already paid for. For anyone in that second category, my guide to life insurance for smokers in Canada walks through how the requalification piece actually works.

What Empire Life Underwriting Actually Requires

For most applicants aged 18 to 50, Empire Life will assess up to $2,000,000 of coverage with no blood work and no nurse visit, using a phone interview or an online health questionnaire instead. Above age 50, that ceiling drops fast.

This is the part of the review that actually matters, and the part nobody else publishes. Everything below comes from Empire’s current underwriting requirements chart.

How much you can get without a needle, by age

Bar length shows the coverage ceiling normally assessed without vitals or a blood profile, scaled against $2,000,000. Based on Empire Life’s underwriting requirements chart current at the time of writing. Requirements change, and Empire reserves the right to order more evidence on any application.

Three things worth knowing about that chart. The online questionnaire route is only available on Empire’s electronic application, so a paper submission puts you into the phone interview instead. A phone interview with vitals can be swapped for a paramedical visit, but a phone-interview-only requirement cannot. And requirements are calculated on everything Empire has issued you in the previous six months, not just the policy in front of them. Two $400,000 applications six weeks apart are treated as $800,000.

Why a clean file can still get pulled for blood work

Empire’s own chart says a number of applications between $500,000 and $2,000,000 for ages 18 to 50 may be selected for additional requirements through random selection and predictive analytics. They do not publish how often that happens. In my own recent brokerage experience it lands somewhere around one file in eight to ten, though that is my observation from my book and not a carrier disclosure.

It is not a punishment and it is not something you did wrong on the form.

I view it like going through airport security. There is a certain random selection of people pulled aside for extra screening. Same idea here, and part of the reason is that Empire is testing its own model.

What I tell a client is that it is ultimately up to them what they feel most comfortable with. Plenty of people are completely fine having a nurse come by for twenty minutes. For those who are not, we have options. We can navigate away from Empire and apply somewhere else that hopefully has a no-fluid limit covering the amount. That is the actual value of working with a broker rather than one company. You are not stuck with the first outcome, and no insurer guarantees an application stays fluid-free.

Preferred and Elite rates: the door that only opens one way

Above $1,000,001, Empire offers Preferred and Elite rate classes on its level term plans. Getting considered for them means blood work, vitals and the phone interview. Between $1,000,001 and $2,000,000 you get a genuine choice: provide fluids and be assessed for the better classes, or skip them and take standard rates.

Here is the catch that does not appear in any brochure. Once an application goes in for Preferred or Elite, it cannot be switched back to standard. On a joint application, both people have to pick the same door. And the criteria are strict enough that a lot of healthy people do not clear them: Elite requires no nicotine use in the last fifteen years, no family history of coronary disease, stroke or cancer diagnosed before 65, and no more than one moving violation in three years.

Truth be told, it is not always worth going through for a Preferred or Elite rate. Often there is a very small differential between the rates. If a client is extremely healthy with no family history, excellent vitals, no lifestyle concerns, and is price sensitive, then it may be worth doing the fluids.

But keep in mind that I have come across situations where we thought we were applying for a preferred rate and ended up in a rated scenario, because something came up that was unknown to the client. So while yes, you might get the preferred rate, you might also end up back at the same place with the same standard offer. Or worse: rated, postponed, or declined, because something surfaced that nobody knew about. You have to decide whether that risk is worth potentially saving a few dollars.

How Empire Life underwrites common health conditions

Empire is generally more conservative than most carriers once there is a medical file to read. Not difficult, not unreasonable. Careful. The table below shows the kind of outcome Empire’s own published guidance points to on life coverage. A rating of 150% means roughly one and a half times the standard premium.

Outcomes are illustrative only and depend on the full file. They reflect Empire Life’s published field underwriting guidance current at the time of writing and are subject to change. No outcome here is a promise of approval, of a rate class, or of a price. Always work through the application with a licensed broker before assuming eligibility.

Where this gets real is the cases that fall outside the table. I had an offer come back on a client with psoriasis at 175% of standard, sometimes written as a plus seventy-five extra. That is not a condition most people expect to affect a life insurance premium at all. Skin conditions, historical diagnoses that resolved years ago, a leave from work taken long ago: Empire tends to price those more cautiously than several of its competitors. If you are dealing with something like that, the rating outcomes on psoriasis are a decent illustration of how much the answer varies by carrier.

How an Empire file actually gets routed before it is submitted

None of the above makes Empire a bad carrier. It makes it the wrong first stop for certain files. Here is the order I actually work through.

If you are reading this because you are trying to work out whether to apply here or somewhere else, that is a fifteen minute conversation, not a form. We can map the likely underwriting path before anything is submitted, which matters because a declined application follows you to the next carrier. Get in touch and we will work it out first.

Empire Life Permanent Insurance Options

Empire Life offers four permanent plans: Term to 100 and Solution 100 on the non-participating side, EstateMax and Optimax Wealth on the participating whole life side. All four go to $20,000,000, and three of the four can be issued on a child.

Now the part I have to be honest about, because I work for my clients and not for any particular company. When I look at what Empire offers on whole life and compare the values, both cash value and death benefit, against other carriers, I find Empire is not the leader of the pack. That is not a criticism of the contract. It is a comparison result. I steer people toward what I think is the optimal coverage to protect themselves, their family, or their business, and on participating whole life that often means a different name on the illustration.

So read this as a map of what is available and who each plan actually suits, not as a reason to buy permanent coverage here by default.

Which of the four you would even be looking at

Product availability, issue ages, payment options and value schedules are set by Empire Life’s current product guidelines and can change. Dividends on participating plans are not guaranteed.

One point that surprises people on the permanent shelf. Empire offers no preferred or elite rate classes on any permanent product. Standard non-smoker and standard smoker, that is the whole list. Exceptional health earns you nothing extra here, and a preferred class held on a term policy does not survive a conversion into one of these plans.

EstateMax vs Optimax Wealth: the same family, two different jobs

These two get confused constantly, including by advisors. They sit at opposite ends of the same trade-off.

Early cash value on the left, long-term death benefit on the right. Guaranteed value schedules are set out in each contract. Dividend scales are reviewed annually and are not guaranteed, though Empire guarantees the scale will never fall below zero.

Both plans offer five dividend options: buy more paid-up insurance, take enhanced coverage with a lifetime guarantee attached, accumulate the dividend at interest, reduce your annual premium, or take it in cash. The last two can create taxable income, so the choice is not purely a performance decision.

The cash value question everyone gets wrong

You will read that participating whole life takes seventeen or twenty years before the cash value catches up to what you have paid in. That is true of one specific design: a base-funded policy with nothing extra going in.

Both plans carry an additional deposit option rider, available on the 10 pay, 20 pay and pay-for-life versions. Fund the policy up toward its tax-exempt limit, direct the dividends into paid-up additions, and the shape of the curve changes materially. Cash value can track much closer to premiums paid in the early years. The trade-off is that you are committing more money sooner, and growth above the guaranteed values still depends on dividends that are not promised.

Both scenarios are legitimate. They are just different products in practice, and an illustration showing one tells you nothing about the other. If you are weighing participating whole life at all, this breakdown of what whole life actually does is worth reading before you look at a single number. For business owners the mechanics change again, which I have covered in participating whole life inside a Canadian corporation. None of this is tax or legal advice, and anything involving corporate ownership or estate structure should be confirmed with your accountant.

One structural note. All four plans can be written joint first-to-die or joint last-to-die. Joint last-to-die on a permanent plan is a common estate tool for couples and it prices very differently from two single policies, which I have walked through in this piece on joint last-to-die policies and estate planning.

Guaranteed Life Protect: Empire’s Only No-Medical Policy

Guaranteed Life Protect is the only Empire Life policy that asks no health questions at all. It issues from age 40 to 75, caps at $50,000 of coverage, and pays a limited benefit if death is from natural causes in the first 24 months.

Worth being blunt about the naming, because the old version of this page got it wrong and so does most of the internet. This is one product, not a category. Every other plan Empire sells is fully underwritten. If you have read anywhere that Empire offers no-medical life insurance, this $50,000 policy is the entire extent of it.

It is also guaranteed issue, not simplified issue. Those two get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. Simplified issue asks a short list of health questions and can pay in full from day one if you get through them. Guaranteed issue asks nothing and pays a reduced amount early on in exchange. If that distinction is new to you, it is the single most useful thing to understand before you buy either, and I have laid it out properly in simplified versus guaranteed coverage.

What the policy does, and when

Based on Empire Life’s Guaranteed Life Protect product materials current at the time of writing. Contract terms, values, and limitation periods are set out in the policy and can change. This is a summary, not the contract.

The detail that separates it from the other guaranteed issue policies

Read that 24-month clause again: premiums paid, without interest. That wording matters more than it looks.

Several competing guaranteed issue policies in Canada return your premiums plus a few percent if you die during the waiting period. Empire’s returns the premiums flat. On a small policy over two years the dollar difference is modest, but it is a real difference and it is the sort of thing that never comes up until a family is filing a claim. When I am placing guaranteed issue coverage, that clause is one of the things I actually read.

Which is why I do not have a default here. I go to every guaranteed provider and compare who has the better offer at that specific age and amount. That includes Empire, along with Canada Protection Plan, Assumption Life, Manulife, Beneva, and Humania, among others. Sometimes Empire wins on price. Sometimes another carrier issues to a younger age, or a higher amount, or handles the waiting period more generously. There is no single right answer and anyone who gives you one has not compared.

Two eligibility points people trip on. You have to be a Canadian resident for tax purposes, so citizenship on its own does not qualify you. And while there are no health questions, you do have to state your smoking status accurately. There is no medical exam checking that, which is exactly why an inaccurate answer becomes a claims problem later rather than an application problem now. Acceptance under a guaranteed issue policy is not the same as a guarantee that every claim pays; the contract terms still govern.

Critical Illness, Disability, and Group Benefits at Empire Life

Empire Life sells critical illness insurance in two tiers, writes group benefits plans for employers, and does not sell standalone disability income insurance at all. Those three facts get blurred together constantly, including on the previous version of this page.

Critical illness: CI Protect and CI Protect Plus

Critical illness is one of the areas where Empire genuinely competes. When I am deciding where to place a comprehensive critical illness case, a few factors always come into it. Underwriting process is one, and I run client history against carrier guidelines before I pick. Cost is another, because ultimately I want a client paying the least premium for the same type of coverage. And the coverage itself has to be the same or very similar. When those line up, Empire Life CI Protect Plus is a product I will push a client toward over comparable plans from other carriers.

The two tiers are not two versions of the same thing. They are genuinely different products.

Product specifications per Empire Life’s current guidelines and subject to change. The covered condition list, definitions, waiting periods and survival periods are set out in the policy contract. Coverage of any specific illness is never assumed from a marketing summary.

Three details in that comparison are worth pulling out, because they are the ones that decide real cases.

The partial benefit on CI Protect Plus pays 15% of your coverage amount on diagnosis of one of six less severe conditions, including ductal breast cancer in situ, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, malignant melanoma, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and coronary angioplasty. It can pay twice, for two different conditions, up to a total of $50,000. Crucially it does not reduce your main coverage and does not end the policy. That is a meaningful feature and it does not exist on the basic tier.

The money-back options are riders, not built-in. There are two: one returns premiums if you die before a claim, the other returns a percentage if you surrender the policy having never claimed. Both have to be added at issue and cannot be bolted on later. The surrender version pays 70% at attained age 60, rising to 100% at 75, and requires the coverage to have been in force at least fifteen years. On the 15-pay plan it pays nothing until the fifteenth anniversary and then 100%.

And CI Protect uses the life insurance underwriting decision. That makes it a useful add-on when someone is already applying for life coverage and does not want a second health assessment. The trade-off is that no higher-premium offer exists on that tier, so a file that would have been rated simply does not get the coverage. CI Protect Plus, assessed on its own, has room to make a rated offer instead.

If you are new to this coverage type, start with whether critical illness insurance is worth it for you. If you already know you want it, my comparison of Canadian critical illness carriers puts Empire beside the others.

Two things that surprise people. Critical illness is stricter than life underwriting, and family history matters far more here: a parent diagnosed young with cancer, heart disease, diabetes or dementia can affect a critical illness offer while the life side goes standard. And when you apply for both at once, Empire does not add the two coverage amounts together to set requirements. It uses whichever chart demands more.

For incorporated business owners there is a structure worth knowing about, where the corporation and the individual split ownership of a return-of-premium critical illness policy. It is not unique to any one carrier. Empire has material on it, as do several others, because it is a structure rather than a product. I have set out how it works in shared interest critical illness. Anything involving corporate ownership should be confirmed with your accountant before you act on it.

Disability: the correction that matters most on this page

I place a lot of disability coverage and none of it goes to Empire. On a recent professional client I put the life insurance with Empire, personally and corporately, and the disability went to two entirely different carriers. That is not a workaround. That is how the shelf is built. For anyone in a profession with an association plan on the table, the trade-offs are worth understanding first, which I have covered using the dentist example of association coverage versus independent.

Empire does offer a waiver of premium rider alongside its life and critical illness plans, which keeps the policy paid if you become disabled. Useful, but understand what it is. It protects the policy, not your income.

Group benefits through Empire Life

Plenty of people land on this page looking for Empire group benefits, drug coverage, or a claims question, so it is worth saying that I place group plans with Empire as well, not just individual policies.

A typical Empire group plan carries extended health and drug coverage, dental, employee and dependant life, out-of-country travel, and an employee assistance program. The thing most business owners do not realize is that the renewal is negotiable. Every year the carrier comes back with a proposed increase based on how the plan has been claimed against, and that opening number is a starting position, not a final one. Taking a plan to market periodically is what keeps the renewal honest, and a mid-year experience report means the number in the spring is never a surprise.

The other thing worth flagging: group life amounts are small, they end when the job ends, and they are not underwritten around your individual situation. Every owner and most senior staff on a group plan still need individual coverage underneath it. For an incorporated business that usually opens a wider conversation about key person coverage as well.

How Empire Life Compares to Other Canadian Insurers

Empire Life competes hardest on term flexibility, exchange and conversion rights, and price for healthy applicants under about 45. It competes least well on participating whole life values, on files carrying a health history, and on disability, where it has no standalone product at all.

On my end there is really no bias, because we can go anywhere. It comes down to who gives us the most cost-effective solution and has the most flexibility. That sounds like a throwaway line until you see how often the answer changes between two clients who look similar on paper.

Match the carrier to what you are actually optimizing for

A blanket ranking of insurers is useless. What is useful is knowing which priority puts Empire on the shortlist and which one takes it off.

Positioning reflects broker experience and current product guidelines at the time of writing, not a ranking of insurers. Every carrier’s rates, underwriting posture, and product shelf change. Confirm against live quotes for your own age, amount, and health profile.

What actually happened on real files

Rather than argue about who is better in the abstract, here is a record of where Empire ended up on cases I placed, and the single reason each went the way it did.

De-identified outcomes from placed and attempted cases. Individual results depend entirely on the applicant, the coverage amount, and the carrier’s assessment at that time. Nothing here predicts what any insurer would offer you.

Look at the shape of that record. Empire wins the clean files and the structural ones. It loses the files with history on them, and it occasionally loses on renewal price to a carrier that happens to be sharper at that age and amount on that day. That last one is not a knock on Empire. It is an argument for re-shopping coverage rather than assuming your original decision still holds five years later.

The last case is the one worth sitting with. Nothing was wrong with that client medically. A condition corrected in childhood and a leave taken years earlier were read cautiously, and the price moved accordingly. Had she gone direct to one company instead of through a broker, that offer would have been the answer, and she would have either paid it or walked away without coverage. Going through a broker meant we could pull the file, protect her in the meantime, and take the same history to a carrier that assessed it differently. Same person, same medical record, different outcome. If you want to see how differently insurers approach specific situations, my breakdown of which Canadian insurers lead in which specialty makes the point across the whole market.

What Empire Life Is Like After the Policy Is Issued

Empire Life administration is generally straightforward, with two recurring friction points: payment method changes cannot be made through the client portal, and premium drafts land a few business days after the date people expect. Neither is serious. Both cause a lot of confused phone calls.

Why online reviews tell you almost nothing here

Review volume for any Canadian life insurer is thin, and most of what exists is about group benefits claims, drug coverage, and dental reimbursement. Different departments, different work.

Meanwhile the thing that actually matters, whether a death claim gets paid promptly and without a fight, is almost never reviewed. The person who would write that review is not the person who bought the policy.

Not one of those is a star rating. I have written about why life insurance claims actually get denied in Canada, and almost none of the reasons are the insurer being difficult.

The four things clients actually call me about

How the paperwork side runs

Applications go through Empire’s electronic system with e-signature codes issued per application. Medical evidence, when ordered, runs through the carrier’s electronic health workflow rather than paper moving between offices. A clean file inside the no-fluid limits can move quickly, which is the operational reason I sometimes route a time-sensitive case here rather than to a slower carrier.

Set expectations honestly on servicing, though. Empire is mid-sized, not a giant with an army on the phones. Straightforward requests get handled. Complicated ones need a nudge. I have had to go back and ask for a courtesy credit on a client’s behalf after a draft-timing problem caused a returned payment. They sorted it. But somebody had to ask, and chasing a billing correction is not a good use of a client’s afternoon.

Two habits that prevent most of this

Empire Life Pros and Cons

Empire Life’s strengths cluster around term design and contract rights. Its weaknesses cluster around medical underwriting, permanent insurance values, and two product gaps. Almost nothing on either list is about the headline price.

That is deliberate. Price moves week to week and by profile. Contract rights and underwriting posture are structural, and they are what you are actually stuck with for the next twenty years.

Neither list settles anything on its own. What settles it is your age, the amount you need, your health history, and what the other carriers say about the same file on the same day. If you want the wider framework rather than one company’s scorecard, I have written about the ten factors that actually decide a term policy and what life insurance really costs in Canada.

Frequently Asked Questions About Empire Life

Check Whether Empire Life Fits Before You Apply

A decline or a rating follows you. It sits on your record and the next carrier sees it, which is why the order you approach companies in matters more than most people realize.

Already hold an Empire Life policy and not sure it still fits? That is a different conversation and usually a shorter one. Start with what to check on an annual policy review, then get in touch if something looks off.