The universal overnight lending rate in Canada has been kept at a low 1% since September 2010 as a way of fuelling growth throughout the universal financial and economic slump and rising risks.

At the same time, the United States, China and even emerging countries will also produce at a slower rate than formerly believed, while European countries are facing a likelihood of suffering a relatively brief recession. Nobody said that economic developments cannot in fact be less favourable.

All this is bad news for Canadian insurers. Their income bank on nominal interest gained from financial investments.

Priceless by RogueSun Media

Incomes from premiums paid for life insurance are invested in bonds—a very safe and uncomplicated investment instrument—and are left there to produce interest. This interest can then cover the costs of claims, responsibilities, and other administrative expenses. Any income left over will become insurance company profits.

Rates are unprecedentedly low and they have put the screws to profitability for of all Canadian insurers. Many of them are offseting these rates by adding to the premiums on their permanent life insurance plans instead. All major insurance providers have raised the rates on their fixed-premium universal life policies. Manulife has taken even more drastic measures – the company resolved to eliminate this type of policy from their universal life and whole life lineup. Worse yet, other players are expected to follow suit in the near future.

This situation is likely to last since both Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve assert that they are going to keep low interest rates for now.

The bright side of the “interest crisis” is that a select number of smaller Canadian insurers freezing the rates on their permanent life insurance coverage policies.

If you are interested, read more on the effect of the current lasting interest rate trough on pensions and government employees.

Life-and-death conditions are just the tip of the iceberg. Even if one survives longer than the originally anticipated life span, the insurer may delay the payout to verify the claim’s reliability. One of the actions undertaken, for example, is the confirmation of the fact that the insured was not aware of the critical illness at the time of application.

Happy Tulips by Rachel Kramer

Most recently, some Canadian Criticall Illness insurance providers started to offer what is called an automatic increase benefit rider. This rider enables the client to automatically increase their critical illness insurance benefit at agreed-upon dates. These automatic increases also mean that the monthly fees by the appropriate ratio.

RBC Insurance, for example, offers its clients an Automatic Increase Benefit Rider, allowing the customer to add to their plan benefit each other year.

In addition, during the first 10 years of the Critical Illness plan, the customer can boost her or his total coverage without additional proof of his or her insurability. The amount is going to be equal to 20% of the originally agreed-upon critical illness benefit. This means the actual coverage can double within a decade.

Worth noting is that RBC automatic benefit increases can not be ignored or postponed. If the customer resists an increase, the add-on automatically terminates, yet previously accepted increases will remain in effect.

Speaking of differences among insurance providers, Canada Life is the single company which differentiates between cigar and pipe smokers when underwriting in that they class these individuals as non-smokers for the purposes of disability and critical illness policies. This has a significant potential to reduce the final cost.

Further material on Critical Illness insurance: How Equitable Life Insurance revamped its Equiliving Plan for our youngest.

Royd Moor Windfarm in Yorkshire by PressReleaseFinder

Mortgage Life Insurance

Commencing with what is a terrible product: Mortgage life insurance. This idea obliges you to pay for insurance coverage that diminishes as you go. Thus, the more premiums you send to your insurer, the more money there is for the insurer to keep. Nobody should ever purchase mortgage life insurance since there are dramatically better means of insuring the family to offset the risk of default.

Maximizing the Value of Your Benefit Packages with Group Insurance

Employee benefits are an intricate part of each company’s rewards bundle. The amount of permutations of various perks is innumerable. Moreover, the costs of employee benefits have been making it unavoidable that businesses’ decisions are as economically effective as possible.

Based on the size of your business, you may use various means of finding the needed information and feedback as to what your employees will be grateful for. Review your progress with a qualified group policy professional to prevent common errors and shorten the process.

Simplified Issue Life Insurance

Simplified issue life insurance is a category of life insurance that is available to almost any applicant regardless of her or his medical history. This includes clients with incurable illnesses, HIV-infected individuals, and people with detrimental habits, such as smoking or drug abuse.

Insurers offering these plans will accept almost any applicant, asking no or just a few health queries on the application form. As this practice exposes insurers to much greater risk, however, the expenses will echo this and will be considerably more pricey than with traditional life insurance plans. Also, the ceiling plan figure will be bounded at several thousand dollars, whereas normal policies may have the coverage figure in the millions. In addition no-medical and simplified plans will contain exclusions so that the underwriter is protected from mistreatment of the benevolence. This is the price one has to pay if you cannot qualify for regular insurance policies but wish to be covered for the benefit of your relatives.

Quakes are disastrous and emotionally upsetting, especially in Japan, where the Sendai quake shook at the epicentre as violently as to earn 9.0 points on the Richter scale.  As such, it ranked as the 5^th most massive earthquake recorded in the history of measurements.

Road Crack after Earthquake

The might, however, is not the most important either, because even a less momentous hit close to inhabited areas may produce more losses than a great occurrence happening in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  If you remember, the last earthquake shook Canada not so long ago, taking place as recently as on June 23^rd, 2010 in Ontario.  When you are lucky enough to enduring something like that, you don’t want to to think about having to pay to pick up the pieces – that’s where life insurance coverage can come in very handy.

LSM inquired five biggest Canadian insurers and they all say that they will include death caused by a disaster.  The covered individual, however, cannot be a victim of the natural disaster in a place that is barred by your insurance company.

The commonness of natural disasters of vast importance continues to rise.  It was hardly a few days prior to the Sendai tragedy that swaths of Australia were underwater.

Between the 80s and 1990s, the death toll of natural disasters has luckily fallen slightly from the mean 86,000 each year to only 75,000 a year, yet the number of people actually influenced rose from about 147 million per year to 211 million yearly.

There are 200% more disasters nowadays than there ever were in the sixties and, even worse, the financial impact has jumped up nine-fold in that same period.

Passing away in an earthquake is increasingly more realistic, so in Canada, life insurance that is there when the insured dies in an earthquake is quite a realistic alternative.

You may want to learn more about no medical life insurance as well.

Bali Cremation Ceremony

The Cremation Association of North America (CANA) tells us that cremation rates continue to increase steadily in Canada, from 5.89% in 1970 to over 68.4% in 2009. An article on the funeral “business” from Sun Media estimates that about 55% of those buried in 2010 decided for cremation.  Put simply, the spreading “popularity” of incineration over the years can be ascribed to one thing – affordability.

At LSM Insurance, we know that more and more Canadians are learning about substitutes of the traditional funeral to save money.  Life insurance plan can be very effective in providing for the expenditures associated with cremation in the country.

Life insurance proceeds are exempt from tax and the coverage can normally be acquired for a very reasonable monthly premium.  Life insurance plans can be broadly categorized as follows:

1. Traditional Life Insurance: the applicant must complete a general medical examination and answer several health questions.
2. Simplified Issue Life Insurance with no tests or exams and only three-12 health-related questions.
3. Guaranteed Issue Life Insurancewith no medical exams or tests and with no health questions.  Guaranteed Issue Life Insurance is sometimes dubbed No Medical Life Insurance

A potential problem with guaranteed issue insurance coverage (and some simplified issue insurance policies) is an initial limitation of the death benefit – the death benefit may be limited during the first 2 years—except for an accidental death—to a return-of-premium plus interest.  This provision is designed to avoid abuse of life insurance in Canada as a speculative investment vehicle for otherwise uninsurable people.

Tokyo: The City that Never Sleeps by kevindooley

RBC Insurance, for example, now offers a Business Insurance Option, which is basically the same as the Future Income Option which applies to its disability plans.

Business Insurance Option is a policy rider that can be combined with RBC’s Disability Insurance. The rider is reasonably priced guarantees for your business partner an option to acquire increased protection without having to undergo a medical examination. This is reasonable in the event that the value of their business increases.

Business Insurance Option warrants that the business owners are insurable in the future. A good example of this: one of the partners was diagnosed with a health problem (like hypertension) but their organization increased in performance. Asking for additional coverage later could very well be an issue with a typical bid. However, thanks to the Business Insurance Option, the insured can augment their personal income protection every two years. This date—usually being the same as the inception date of the option—is also called “option date”.

• Extra insurance coverage can be taken out up to 18 per cent of the limit rider figure available..
• Financial data demonstrating insurability is needed, but the client needn’t provide health test results as long as these option dates are operational.
• The extra fee is, however, calculated based on the client’s current age, not the age when he or she submitted the initial application.
• The terms and coverage type of the newly added coverage are just the same as those of the basic insurance plan.

Learn about special insurance policy riders and options. Stay abreast with the latest insurance news, check out LSM Insurance online.

You may want to learn more about no medical life insurance as well.

To begin with, we should introduce group benefit insurance and then specify its rewards to you and your employees: the financial risk of healthcare-related costs is distributes throughout multiple members of staff, all included in a single contract. Every employee then deposits evenly.

While the plan is in effect, members of the protected group who become ill or require service are refunded by the agreement. Family members of the covered employees also included within the plan as per the deal.

The benefits of a Group Benefits Policy for the business’s workers are as follows:

• You will have an edge in the job market. You entice and hold quality employees, which helps decrease expenses stemming from unnecessary people fluctuation. Your employee will be safer and happier, realizing that their families and themselves are covered.
• The cost of such insurance is reduced as compared to individual plans. Group Benefit Plans do not suffer of adverse selection, offering everyone identical conditions.
• It’s an economical method to provide for employees. Improved productivity and improved morale come as a result of higher financial security and social support.
• Group Plans are tax-effective. The majority of premiums are tax-deductible.

Lorne Marr is an independent insurance broker in Canada. Lorne works with over 13 Canadian insurers, such as Manulife Financial Life Insurance or Sun Life Insurance.

You may have expected that the United States are sitting on top of the ranking. They are traditionally followed by Brazil, but China and India are the runners-up in the statistics. The number five in the ladder is Mexico. The developing countries increasingly offer advantageous quality for a good price.

Considering the frequency of cosmetic and/or plastic surgeries in Canada, LSM Insurance resolved to complete a survey of how such cosmetic and plastic procedures may affect people’s ability to obtain insurance. Is there another option than no medical life insurance for such patients in Canada? Five Canadian companies were questioned about their way of dealing with people who are cosmetic and/or plastic surgery patients– unfortunately none would give a simple answer, as all traditional life insurance applications must be underwritten completely.

Even those insurers who did talk affirmed that prospective clients who are going for cosmetic and/or plastic procedure such as lip enhancement, breast enlargement, or Botox treatment may likely still qualify for regular rates. These surgeries are, however, handled just like other surgical procedures: the life insurer may postpone making a decision sooner than the actual surgical procedure has been done. Applicants should therefore—when possible—wait with surgery plans until after their contract has been signed by the insurance company.

Treatments tied with other mental or nervous disorders might carry an increased health threat and this could potentially cause the applicant to receive an extra life insurance coverage premium or have him or her refused straight out.

Author, Lorne Marr, is an independent insurance broker and an expert on guaranteed issue life insurance. Lorne works with over 13 Canadian insurers, such as Manulife Financial Life Insurance or Sun Life Insurance.

Even though only few Canadians take part in cocaine and crack use, as opposed to the 10.6% that do marijuana, about 11% of Canadians had experience with one of six illicit drugs during the year of the survey. Among these drugs are cannabis and/or marijuana, cocaine and/or its derivatives, amphetamines, ecstasy, hallucinogens (excl. salvia) or heroin (a semi-synthetic opioid drug). 17.7% of men and 7.6% of women had done drugs, with youth reaching 27.3%.

The use of banned drugs has been declining in Canada since 2004, creating many former users and addicts who will want to acquire life insurance once.

image by engineroomblog

Life insurance companies do not really particularly favour the use of cocaine or of other harsh drugs. Ongoing addiction to heroin, cocaine or ecstasy will earn you an instantaneous turn down. This is simply due to the fact that illicit drug expeirence is a pre-existing medical condition. It is important to know, however, that drug users may be eligible for simplified issue policies. These plans do not have any medical tests and often do not have a drug related question.

We inquired four life insurers on how their strategies look at cocaine, heroin and ecstasy. This is what we found:

• Current cocaine, heroin and ecstasy use will earn the applicant a turn down.
• If the insured has not been using drugs for more than 4 years, the resulting price quote will almost certainly lead to a policy rating if there are no remaining health issues. A policy rating means that the insured qualifies, but pays an additional premium due to the bigger risk to the insurance company. Plan ratings are generally in multiples and can be anything from 50% to 400% on top of the typical cost.
• Prior use ended more than 6 years ago may qualify the client for standard premiums (i.e. without policy rating). Of course, this only works if he or she is in good health otherwise and has no lifestyle issues as a consequence of the past addiction.

A good insurance advisor with experience in this area can help you acquire quality life insurance for a reasonable price.

Are there ways to avoid this, you may ask. Most, but not all, life insurers let you have the occasional cigar – normally once per month. Canada Life, for that matter, which permits one cigar as often as each week. On the other side of the spectrum is Unity Life which has a separate rate for cigar lovers.

Box Cuban Cigars by sridgway

Should you be tested, avoid cigars for about a week so that there is no trace of cotinine—a nicotine metabolite—in your body. Cotinine is used to measure one’s exposure to tobacco smoke. Cotinine has a half-life of 20 hours. This means that the substance’s levels will dwindle to half their post-smoking levels every 20 hours. Past the initial twenty hours, cotinine levels in your body will decline to half, it will quarter within the next twenty, etc. For these reasons, it is safe to count on any amount of cotinine to be untraceable within four days.

The premiums for cigar smokers differ sharply between companies – and can quite possibly make up over $40,000 for a 20-year policy.

As with any other insurance application, being truthful when applying for coverage is vital. Unless a insurance policy has been effective for twenty-four months, the insurance company has the right to contest it if you omit or misrepresent a relevant piece of information. The actual length of the incontestability period may vary depending on the life insurance company.

Cigar smokers and smokers in general will get the best value when attended to by a qualified independent broker who clearly stays up-to-date with the underwriting guidelines of a range of Canadian insurers. The same holds true for anyone with pre-existing medical conditions.

Written by Lorne Marr, Toronto insurance broker and expert in no-medical life insurance. Lorne has been working in life insurance in Canada for over a dozen years.