The ranks of non-cancellable individual disability insurance providers have shrunk from three to two since Manulife stopped accepting applications for its Proguard Series and Venture Series products on September 30, 2022.

Manulife also discontinued its non-cancellable Buy-Sell Plus and ExpenseComp products on the same date. Buy-Sell Plus is designed to finance the purchase of a disabled shareholder's business shares by the partners. ExpenseComp covers the overhead costs of businesses when the owner becomes disabled.

Note that people who already hold a Manulife non-cancellable disability insurance product remain insured.

Three similar products...  

Canada Life and RBC Insurance are now the only players in the non-cancellable market, with a total of three disability insurance products. Canada Life offers the Lifestyle Protection Plan, and RBC Insurance offers two products: The Foundation Series and The Professional Series.

These three products are similar in several respects. The age range at which these non-cancellable disability policies can be issued is 18 to 60. They are non-cancellable until age 65. The person insured must work at least 30 hours per week, full time, and must earn a minimum of $12,000 per year, before taxes and after expenses.

Under the Lifestyle Protection Plan, Canada Life covers people who work at least 24 hours per week, in the case of certain occupations. Whether the occupation is 30 hours or 25 hours per week, the applicant must work at least 39 weeks per year. 

...including a niche product  

Canada Life's Lifestyle Protection Plan and RBC Insurance's Foundations Series cover all occupation classes: 4A, 3A, 2A, A, and B. RBC Insurance's second product, The Professional Series is tailored to executives and professionals. It insures workers and self-employed people whose occupations fall into classes 4A, 3A and 2A exclusively. Higher classes qualify for preferential rates. 

Class 4A usually refers to professionals and executives such as managers or administrators, and members of a professional order, such as doctors, engineers and lawyers.

Class 3A refers to other professionals and employees who work in a position with high stability and responsibility in an exclusively office (or home)-based job. 

Class 2A includes supervisors without manual work, and certain skilled and technical workers.

Class A includes skilled manual workers who have no unusual accident hazard. 

Finally, class B includes workers who carry out the most hazardous work, or those in occupations whose experience has not been good enough to classify at Class A rates. 

Other factors will be taken into account to categorize the insured’s occupation, including the level of income of the person insured, their income stability and whether the client’s business is financially sound.