Simplified issue and guaranteed issue individual life insurance products foster partnerships with insurtechs and allow insurers to reach a wider audience, as reported in the April 2026 edition of the Insurance Journal.
InsuranceINTEL, the Insurance Journal Publishing Group’s product information centre, has compiled a list of simplified issue insurance products from 11 insurers. It has prepared two comparative tables for this supplement to the April issue of the magazine, one on term life insurance products and the other on permanent life insurance products.
Limited requirements
The table of simplified term life insurance products highlights one of the features that allows simplified term life insurance to reach a wider audience: it has fewer underwriting requirements than fully underwritten products.
Among others, Assumption Life states that it requires no medical exam or blood test when applying for its Platinum Protection Term and Golden Protection Term life products.
Other insurers mention the number of questions they will ask the prospective customer. Sun Life stands out by asking only 3 eligibility questions for its Sun Life Go Simplified Term Life Insurance product. At the other end of the spectrum, UV Insurance will base its decision on 15 eligibility questions before issuing Term Superior+ Simplified Issue - Express, and on 25 questions for Term Superior+ Simplified Issue - Immediate.
In some cases, insurers retain some flexibility. For its Simplified 10 and Simplified 20 products, Empire Life specifies that the underwriting team may conduct an underwriting audit after receiving the answers to its simplified health questionnaire.
Canada Protection Plan, for its part, indicates that the client must answer "no" to all questions to qualify for the CPP Deferred Elite Term coverage. Applicants for the CPP Preferred Term products will be subject to underwriting and may be required to provide medical evidence.
Suitable for guaranteed issue
As the comparative table of permanent simplified issue insurance below demonstrates, permanent insurance provides a suitable platform for offering another simplified product: guaranteed issue insurance.
As mentioned in the April special report in the Insurance Journal, applicants for guaranteed issue insurance are not subject to any underwriting requirements. This insurance differs from simplified issue insurance in that the insured is typically only covered in the event of accidental death during the two years following the policy's issuance.
Assumption Life offers three permanent simplified issue insurance products. One of them, Bronze Protection, is a guaranteed issue product. In permanent insurance, the following insurers offer only guaranteed issue products: Beneva, with Guaranteed Issue Whole Life and Simplified Whole Life; Empire Life, with Guaranteed Life Protect; Manulife, with Manulife Guaranteed Issue Life; and Sun Life, with Sun Life Go Guaranteed Life Insurance. iA Financial Group offers two permanent simplified products, including Guaranteed Access Life, a guaranteed issue product. Canada Protection Plan offers four permanent simplified products, including CPP Guaranteed Acceptance Life, a guaranteed issue insurance policy.
An exception in the permanent simplified issue insurance niche, Humania Assurance offers Insurance without medical exam T100 as a simplified issue policy, but reserves one of the underwriting classes of this product for those who want their insurance to be guaranteed issue.
Age range
Some insurers facilitate access to permanent simplified issue insurance by broadening the age range at which the product can be purchased. For example, UV Insurance offers coverage starting at 15 days old for applicants to the Adaptable and Whole Life High Values products. However, the mutual insurance company is more restrictive regarding the maximum age for enrollment, which it sets at 75 years.
Most of its competitors offer simplified permanent life insurance for individuals aged 18 to 80. iA Financial Group stands out with a range of coverage periods from 6 months to 80 years, for both Access Deferred Life, Deferred Plus, and Immediate Plus, as well as Guaranteed Access Life.
Assumption Life extends the limit to age 85 with Silver Protection, Gold Protection, and Platinum Protection (Whole Life), for its life pay coverage. Empire Life is more restrictive, offering simplified permanent life insurance only for individuals aged 40 to 75. Sun Life fares only slightly better, with an age range of 30 to 74 years plus 364 days.
Simplifying the client and advisor experience
According to one of the insurers in the simplified underwriting market, streamlining underwriting requirements is helping to increase the number of policies sold in Canada. “In 2020, we implemented simplified underwriting processes aimed at increasing the number of policies sold and reaching the middle class and the family market,” said Guillaume Fauteux, Executive Vice President, Business Development and Marketing, Individual, Group Insurance and Investment, Strategy & Innovation, at UV Insurance, in an interview with the Insurance Portal.
Fauteux added that these processes, hosted on their digital platform called My Universe, have a second objective: to offer advisors “the ease of doing business with us.” He believes that beyond the product itself, the simplified issuance process frees up advisors' time to focus on financial education for their clients, at a time when financial literacy "is a challenge."
Easing compliance
He also believes that UV Insurance's platform accelerates and streamlines the experience, "in a context where the compliance burden is still significant for advisors."
"If we can compress the technological process related to the insurance application, illustration, follow-up, and implementation, it gives advisors more time to cross-sell or analyze the client's other financial needs," explains Fauteux.
This article is a Magazine Supplement to the April 2026 issue of the Insurance Journal.
