How PolicyMe Makes Life Insurance Easier in Canada
See affordable life insurance quotes from PolicyMe and other top companies.
Life insurance in Canada was overdue for change
Shopping for life insurance has never been anyone’s favorite to-do list item. It can feel time-consuming and confusing at best; at worst, the traditional life insurance process can become emotionally taxing, invasive, and financially draining.
These problems aren’t just a headache for Canadians. In many cases, they’re actually costing Canadian families the real financial protection they need.
The 2025 PolicyMe Life Insurance Gap Report found that 42% of Canadians either don’t have life insurance or aren’t sure if they do.
The most common reasons Canadians don’t buy life insurance
As our founders studied the shortcomings of the Canadian life insurance industry, they identified three major pain points that keep nearly half of Canadians from buying life insurance (and make the process more difficult for those who do):
- Lack of affordability: Life insurance premiums are out of touch with the escalating cost of living in Canada today. For 34% of Canadians without coverage, cost was a leading factor in their decision not to buy.
- Medical exams: One in four uninsured Canadians (25%) said that medical tests required for life insurance underwriting discouraged them from trying to buy a policy.
- Mistrust of insurers: The insurance industry is hard to understand, and Canadian insurers haven’t done enough to earn their clients’ trust. As a result, one in five Canadians (21%) believes that life insurance companies pay out less than 50% of the time.
Despite these troubling numbers, nothing was changing in the life insurance industry. Customers went through the same shopping process that worked for insurers in the 1980s and 90s: endless calls, piles of paperwork, and medical exams required for most applicants. The market was also flooded with complex insurance products geared toward high earners that most Canadians don’t understand or need: whole life insurance, indexed universal life insurance, participating life insurance, and more.
One thing was clear: The way Canadians shopped for life insurance was overdue for a change.
So, we changed it.
How PolicyMe is changing life insurance in Canada
PolicyMe reimagined life insurance by eliminating the hassles that have long defined the industry. We pair smart technology with trusted human advisors to deliver clear, affordable coverage and support whenever it’s needed. Our products are built for Canadians, simple to understand and comprehensive by design.
Delivering real affordability
We believe every Canadian family should be able to afford life insurance, without stressing about overpaying for coverage they’ll never use.
By adopting advanced machine learning techniques and cutting-edge data analysis, we’ve optimized our approval process to offer competitive rates for term life insurance, with instant approval for over 60% of customers. Our average premiums are 5% below the industry average for non-smoking adults aged 30–44 in good health.
Term life insurance is a simple and affordable way to protect your family’s financial future. The key is finding a policy that balances affordability with the right coverage amount. —Christelle Arouko, Licensed Insurance Advisor
Removing barriers between Canadians and coverage
Beyond affordability, we’re focused on tackling the other barriers that stand between Canadians and the coverage they need, like medical exams and the time spent shopping for coverage.
Accelerated underwriting is key to this mission. Using high-speed data analysis, we can quickly capture an applicant’s overall risk level without a medical exam—just a few quick questions that customers can answer online. With accelerated underwriting, 65–70% of applicants between 35 and 50 years old qualify instantly for up to $2 million in coverage. No medical exam, no waiting: just instant, hassle-free insurance.
Putting customer needs over profit
For most Canadians, we start the conversation with term life insurance, and look at other solutions when they’re a better fit.
We believe that term life insurance is the best solution for most Canadians’ financial protection needs. Term life insurance lets you protect your family’s finances during the period when an unexpected death could deal the biggest blow—when kids are young, the mortgage isn’t paid off, or you have some debt. But later in life, when finances are more stable and coverage costs more, term life insurance ends, allowing you to direct your money where it matters most.
Whole, universal, and participating life insurance plans make up such a big portion of other insurers’ coverage offerings not because they make financial sense for most Canadians, but because they’re products that appeal to high net worth customers—customers who can make insurers more money by paying premiums 5–15x higher than those for term life insurance. But when consumers who don’t really need these permanent products get drawn in by marketing, they can end up overpaying for coverage that doesn’t serve their actual needs.
At PolicyMe, our customers’ needs are our guiding light, not our own profits. That’s why term life insurance is the #1 product we recommend to customers, and our only permanent life insurance product is a term-to-100 policy that simply extends the benefits of term life insurance past the traditional age limit into lifetime coverage.
We believe that there’s a place for permanent life insurance products like whole and universal life. For certain consumers, like high net worth individuals who have exhausted their retirement savings plans or people with lifelong dependents, these plans could be the right fit. But because they don’t offer good value for most Canadians, we don’t offer them.
Designing plans for families with features that actually matter
Every life insurance product we’ve designed at PolicyMe has one crucial group in mind: families.
Families need life insurance to protect children’s financial security, but most life insurance plans don’t have benefits built in for families. PolicyMe changed that, with $10,000 of free child coverage included in every single life insurance plan we sell and a 10% discount in the first year for couples who apply for life insurance together.
Other insurers offer child coverage, but it’s usually provided as an optional rider with an added premium. We built it in to maximize the value of each plan and reduce the number of decisions that busy parents need to make when buying coverage.
Offering human support when you need it—not when you don’t
When we started building our insurance products, we knew that customer support from a team of real, experienced human experts was non-negotiable. All the benefits of a digital insurance provider aren’t worth it if customers can’t reach a human expert for compassionate, practical advice.
We knew that traditional insurers’ reliance on in-person meetings and advisor calls could be a major downside for some customers. For those who prefer a self-directed experience, we wanted to make it possible to purchase life insurance entirely online.
The result: Our customer service team, staffed by licensed insurance advisors, is available M–F 9AM–5PM ET by phone or email for those who want to speak to a human. We’re there for you when you need us and we won’t bother you when you don’t. Fully present, fully optional.
Building trust in an industry Canadians struggle to believe in
The life insurance industry has a trust problem, and we’re working to solve it.
“Life insurance is supposed to provide peace of mind,” says Andrew Ostro, CEO and co-founder of PolicyMe. “Yet our findings show that too many Canadians either don’t have coverage or don’t trust the industry.”
Our 2025 life insurance gap study shows how deep the problem of distrust goes: One in five Canadians believes that life insurance companies pay out less than 50% of the time on claims, while less than half believe that insurers honor more than 50% of their life insurance claims.
This is a myth—in fact, Canadian life insurers pay out on 99% of claims—but it’s a persistent one that reflects a serious problem in our industry.
Every PolicyMe insurance policy is built on a solid foundation, backed by the financial stability and industry trust of an established insurance company. As one of Canada’s top growing companies, we’re proud of what we’ve built, and we combine a modern, customer-first experience with the proven strength Canadians expect from a traditional insurer.
Securian Canada, a subsidiary of Securian Financial, underwrites all PolicyMe policies and collaborates with our team on pricing, product design, and other initiatives. Securian has been in business for 70 years, serving Canadians across the nation and building up an “A (Excellent)” financial strength rating from A.M. Best, a key marker of financial stability in the industry.
Our partnership is a promise to Canadians: We’ll work together to make sure you have the protection you need and the transparency to understand where that protection comes from.
Like all Canadian life insurance companies, PolicyMe and Securian’s offerings are backed by Assuris, a non-profit organization that protects Canadian consumers if their life insurance company becomes insolvent.
FAQs: How PolicyMe is changing life insurance in Canada
Helene Fleischer is Content Marketing Manager at PolicyMe, with 9 years in content marketing and 4 in Canada’s insurance industry. She works with skilled writers and licensed insurance advisors to create useful resources that help Canadians navigate insurance decisions with confidence and clarity.
Helene Fleischer is Content Marketing Manager at PolicyMe, with 9 years in content marketing and 4 in Canada’s insurance industry. She works with skilled writers and licensed insurance advisors to create useful resources that help Canadians navigate insurance decisions with confidence and clarity.