Many advisors are reluctant to enter the individual disability insurance market. Insurers are picky when it comes to selecting risks, and advisors fear alienating their clients if difficulties arise in the event of a claim. Yet disability insurance is one of the cornerstones of financial security.
Disability insurance opens the door to both a family clientele and young graduates. It can protect the income of employees, self-employed workers and entrepreneurs alike.
Individual disability insurance also enables advisors to focus their prospecting and marketing on a specific market, rather than “finding anyone with a wallet and a pulse,” as guest expert Sandy Schussel, a performance coach and regular contributor to the Insurance Portal's Expert Corner, writes.
He sees it as one way for advisors to target a niche, declaring themselves experts in a field. “If your expertise is protecting young families from the possible death or disability of the family breadwinner, your market is defined for you,” he writes.
Prospects are plentiful. For example, only 25.3% of self-employed workers aged 15 to 69 had a private disability plan in March 2025, reported a recent Insurance Portal article on the results of Statistics Canada's March 2025 Labour Force Survey. These workers generally have no group insurance.
Rich in features
Individual disability insurance products are rich in features, as demonstrated by the comparative tables prepared for the Insurance Portal by InsuranceINTEL, the product information centre.
They distinguish individual disability insurance from group disability insurance by their generosity. In an individual product, the insurer defines total disability more broadly. The insured can choose a product whose definition of disability is based on his or her own occupation (or profession). Such a definition enables the disabled insured to receive benefits if he or she can no longer work in his or her current position, even if he or she could work in another job that does not require the same skills.
This is one of the benefits offered by RBC Insurance's Professional Series product, in the non-cancellable disability insurance category. This category is called non-cancellable because the insurer cannot change the premium or refuse to renew the contract for a particular class of worker. Nor can the insurer refuse to renew a contract for a particular insured, until the insured has reached age 65. After that age, renewal becomes conditional on an annual basis, and the insured must be working full-time to obtain it.
Targeted professionals
Non-cancellable individual disability insurance is targeted at professionals. They can be divided into several categories, as shown in the comparison table above.
Category 4A refers to senior executives who act as managers or administrators, for example, and professionals who are members of a professional order, such as doctors, engineers, lawyers and notaries.
Occupation category 3A refers to other professionals and employees who work in a very stable profession, with a high degree of responsibility, and who work exclusively in an office or at home.
Occupation category 2A includes supervisors, certain technicians and skilled workers who do not perform manual labor.
Occupational category A (or 1A) refers to skilled manual workers who do not expose themselves to any particular risk in their work.
Occupational categories B and C include workers who are exposed to the greatest hazards, and therefore cannot obtain the preferred rates of category A.
Canada Life's Lifestyle Protection Plan and RBC Insurance's Foundations Series non-guaranteed disability insurance cover the spectrum of Class 4A to B occupations. No non-cancellable products cover occupational category C.
On the other hand, non-guaranteed disability insurance products are available for category C workers. They cover six categories of workers: 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, B and C. This is the case for Humania Assurance's Income Insurance, Accident and Sickness and Accident Insurance, as well as iA Financial Group’s Superior and Acci-Jet programs, according to a more detailed search on the InsuranceINTEL website.
Without explicitly mentioning category C, some insurers do cover six job categories. The InsuranceINTEL database shows that RBC Insurance's non-guaranteed Fundamental Series product also covers six job categories, which the insurer labels 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. For its Solo Essential Disability Income, Desjardins calls its sixth category “5B”.
For its part, Manulife specifies that its non-guaranteed Personal Accident Disability Insurance product does not exclude any type of employment. Coverage for certain high-risk jobs is subject to restrictions. Certain high-risk jobs are over-premiumized, says the insurer.
Beneva specifies, with respect to its Pillar Series non-guaranteed disability insurance, that the occupational category is guaranteed when the contract is issued. If the insured changes occupation after issue to one that the insurer classifies as more dangerous, neither the premium nor the benefits will be affected by this change of occupation, states information found on InsuranceINTEL. Beneva does not offer a sixth occupational category.
More guaranteed than it seems
Non-guaranteed disability insurance products are so named to distinguish them from non-cancellable products, all facets of which are guaranteed. In fact, most non-guaranteed disability insurance policies are guaranteed for renewal.
However, many level-premium non-guaranteed disability insurance products do not guarantee that the premium will remain at the same level for the life of the policy. In some cases, the premium may increase every 5 or 10 years.
The age at which the guaranteed renewal period ends varies from 65 to 75, depending on the product. Many insurers agree to extend the renewal period annually, subject to certain conditions.
Canada Life's Independence Plan is an exception, in that it is a cancellable disability insurance product. Conditionally renewable up to age 65, the insurance contract can be cancelled if the insurer's decision affects all policies in a given risk category.
New products
Individual disability products continue to evolve towards greater generosity. For example, in May 2025, Desjardins Insurance increased the maximum disability benefit for its disability insurance products SOLO Disability Income and SOLO Loan Insurance, which were not included in the previous comparison table because they are credit insurance products. “Your clients will get increased benefits, which will give them better financial security,” explained the insurer in a press release.
The amount of the annuity is a distinguishing feature, but the key lies in the support the advisor can provide if the client becomes disabled. In April, iA Financial Group published a guide to help advisors support their clients through the disability insurance claims process. The guide describes in detail the steps involved in a claim, from the application to the insurer's decision. It reminds advisors that the customer must initiate the claim.
