Life Insurance in Canada

With the title above, it might look like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot as a life insurance brokerage that specializes in the online marketing of life and health insurance. We have thousands of people visit our Internet page daily, and many visitors often approach us about whether they can purchase an insurance policy directly through our website. After pondering on this idea for a long time, we came to a conclusion that purchasing life insurance via the Internet would mean a disservice to our customers.
We have found the following few reasons why it’s not such a smart idea to purchase a life insurance policy online:

1. Life insurance policies should be always regarded as a part of an overall financial portfolio, which is not possible to do when you purchase it directly via a website as a single product. When considering life insurance, careful planning should be put into consideration why the insurance is needed, how much is needed and what’s the optimum type of life insurance for a specific person. It is quite difficult to do this without speaking to a broker over the phone or in person.

2. When you decide to purchase your life insurance via the Internet, you can get only a limited product offer. Most companies offering life insurance online limit their selection to a few carriers and in some instances, just one carrier with only a few of their products.

3. When you purchase your insurance online, there is a risk that you might not fully understand all its characteristics. When you purchase your life insurance online, you may be surprised later about some nuances - for example certain ten-year term policies are not renewable or convertible, or may have a higher than usual renewable premium, and so on.

4. Certain things are just too complicated to be sold online, and life insurance is one of them. There are too many features in some policies (for example Universal Life or Whole Life insurance) that cannot be disclosed when the policy is sold directly online. BMO’s Universal Life policy offers over 400 investment options. The product is too complex to be sold online.

5. If you wish to get in touch with someone from the insurance company, it would be most probably with a call centre and not a broker.

Do not get us wrong, we are not suggesting that the Internet is not a useful resource when purchasing a life insurance. Some websites can offer a lot of useful information concerning life insurance. You can find many useful web tools, for example our Instant Quote Calculator or Needs Analysis Calculator, which can help you a lot. But it is one thing to look for information and another one to actually purchase an insurance.