Empire Life is one of the few insurance companies that offer clients “Permanent Participating Insurance.” For many years, participating policy holders have enjoyed the benefit of being paid dividends on their policies.
The company has two types of permanent participating life insurance products:
Empire Life recently announced improvements to these plans: EstateMax® 8 Pay and Optimax WealthTM 8 Pay. This new payment option allows customers to pay for their permanent participating life insurance policy in as little as eight years. The decision to introduce this option is a result of new CRA tax rules in regards to life insurance products, effective January 1, 2017.
“EstateMax 8 Pay and Optimax Wealth 8 Pay offer consumers lifetime participating life insurance protection without a lifetime of paying premiums,” says Mike Stocks, Empire Life, Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer, Retail. “With Baby Boomers entering retirement and Gen X planning for retirement, many Canadians are seeking simple solutions for their retirement and estate planning needs.”
The contract guarantees the policy holder can pay the full premium in eight years. EstateMax focuses on helping you meet estate planning needs. Optimax Wealth places the focus on cash value accumulation during the first 20 years of the policy, providing you access to early cash values for a variety of needs such as retirement planning, cash flow needs for your small business or to help your children pay for a post-secondary education.
“We are trying to make it simple, fast and easy for Canadians to get the life insurance they need, including allowing them to pay their premiums for lifetime participating life insurance protection more quickly,” says Stocks. “Whether their need is covering final expenses, preserving wealth or leaving a legacy, these products can provide consumers with the peace of mind that comes with a guaranteed base level of permanent life insurance and the opportunity for future growth in their coverage and policy values through participating in the dividends within the Empire Life participating account,” says Stocks.
Empire Life participating whole life insurance plans provide:
The plan has five dividend options:
EstateMax 8 Pay and Optimax 8 Pay policy holders with a substandard rating may be eligible for cash accumulation, cash payment and annual premium reduction dividend options. Enhanced Coverage and paid up additions dividend options are not available for EstateMax 8 Pay and Optimax Wealth 8 Pay clients with a permanent or temporary life insurance substandard rating. However, this restriction does not apply to policies where the insured has a standard rating for the 8 Pay coverage plan but a substandard rating on a CI Protect Plus riders or benefits.
All plans have available riders that are subject to the company’s business rules – make sure you fully understand these rules and all of the fine print on your policy. These riders include Solution ART, Solution 10, Solution 20, Solution 100, CI Protect and CI Protect Plus.
John Quirt, Product Manager, Retail Insurance Products and Marketing states, “Enhanced Coverage dividend option is only available at policy issue. If the life insured applies to have the life substandard rating removed at a later date, the Enhanced Coverage Dividend option will not be available. However, the life insured will have the option to change their dividend option to Paid-Up Additions, after successful removal of all life ratings, subject to business rules.”
In some cases, the EstateMax 20 Pay or Optimax Wealth 20 Pay life insurance coverage plan may be a suitable alternative when you have been issued an 8 pay plan with a substandard rating, but want to have the Enhanced Dividend or paid up addition dividend option. All of the 20 Pay par products are available with all five dividend options, no matter what your rating.
Empire Life’s new EstateMax 8 Pay and Optimax Wealth 8 Pay Participating Whole life insurance products became available to the public on February 8th, 2017.
