Thought Leadership | April 15, 2025
Canadian life insurance premiums reached a record-breaking $2.04 billion in 2024, representing an 8% increase over the previous year, according to LIMRA’s Retail Canadian Life Insurance Sales Survey.
Yet despite this encouraging growth in premiums, the number of policies sold continues to decline—down 5% last year, marking the fourth consecutive year of falling sales.
This trend presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the Canadian life insurance industry: How can we bridge the gap between rising premium revenues and declining policy sales to better protect Canadian families?
In this article, we’ll explore solutions to reverse this trend by empowering advisors, increasing access for underserved families, and streamlining distribution through technology. These solutions collectively benefit everyone in the insurance value chain—carriers, distributors, advisors—and, most importantly, the families they protect.
By focusing on collective success, the industry can ensure sustained growth, stronger partnerships, and greater financial security for more Canadians.
Advisor Enablement
Advisors play a critical role in connecting families with the financial protection they need. However, today’s advisors face mounting pressures—complex compliance requirements, manual processes, fragmented systems, and limited time. These challenges restrict their ability to reach new clients and deepen relationships with existing ones.
To reverse the declining trend in policy sales, the industry must reduce these operational barriers and equip advisors with tools that let them focus on what they do best: providing trusted advice, building relationships, and closing sales.
Reducing Friction for Advisors
Modern digital platforms can significantly reduce friction in an advisor’s day-to-day workflow. By unifying needs analysis, quoting, application submission, and compliance into a streamlined experience, they eliminate the need to juggle multiple systems and reduce administrative overhead.
When routine tasks are automated and tools are easy to navigate, advisors can focus more time on engaging with clients. This added efficiency allows them to serve a broader range of customers—including those with smaller premium needs—without sacrificing profitability.
Enabling a Modern, Compliant Experience
Beyond efficiency, today’s advisors expect a digital experience that feels intuitive and improves their ability to deliver value. Tools that support real-time, data-informed conversations enable more personalized recommendations and build trust with clients at every step.
Meanwhile, built-in compliance features—like automated FNAs and Reason Why Letters—ensure regulatory alignment without disrupting the sales process. This seamless blend of usability and compliance boosts advisor confidence, increases satisfaction, and improves policy placement outcomes.
Benefits Across the Insurance Ecosystem
Advisor enablement isn’t just beneficial for advisors themselves—it strengthens the entire insurance value chain:
- Advisors can serve more clients efficiently, increasing their productivity and earning potential
- Carriers and Distributors benefit from higher placement rates, stronger compliance, and expanded reach—without added overhead
- Families gain faster, more personalized guidance, helping them make informed decisions and secure needed coverage sooner
By prioritizing advisor enablement through technology and innovation, the industry can create a thriving, more responsive distribution network—one that better serves Canadians and drives sustainable policy growth.
Bridging the Coverage Gap for the Underserved Family Market
Nearly a third of Canadian adults report living with a life insurance coverage gap, according to recent research from LIMRA.
While access is one issue, lack of education and misperceptions around affordability are just as significant. Only one in five Canadian adults feel very knowledgeable about life insurance, and over a third believe life insurance is three times more expensive than its actual cost.
At the same time, many advisors find it difficult to serve lower-premium clients efficiently. Traditional sales processes are too time-intensive, making it hard to justify the effort required for smaller policies. As a result, many families who want coverage are left underserved—not by choice, but by structural inefficiencies and information gaps.
To close this gap, we must make it easier for advisors to serve more clients, and easier for consumers to understand their options.
Driving Efficiency to Increase Advisor Capacity
As covered earlier, streamlining the sales process allows advisors to serve a broader range of clients—quickly and profitably. When routine tasks like quoting, compliance, and application management are easier, it becomes economically viable to serve households with more modest coverage needs.
This expanded efficiency increases advisor capacity without adding to workload—and opens the door to markets that have traditionally been overlooked or underserved.
Better Consumer Education
Efficiency also creates more space for meaningful education. When advisors aren’t bogged down by admin, they can spend more time addressing common misperceptions—like the belief that life insurance is prohibitively expensive.
Digital platforms amplify these efforts by giving consumers space to explore at their own pace. Educational tools, content, and interactive quoting experiences help families understand what coverage they need, why it matters, and how affordable it can be.
Creating an Inclusive Insurance Experience
An inclusive insurance market means meeting families where they are—financially, geographically, and in how they prefer to engage. Direct-to-consumer platforms and hybrid sales models that blend self-service with advisor support can dramatically expand accessibility.
Hybrid models allow families to begin their journey online—aligned with modern expectations—while keeping advisors available to step in with guidance when needed. This flexible model respects both autonomy and the value of expert advice, helping advisors scale while still offering a personalized experience.
A Win for the Entire Ecosystem
The combination of efficiency, education, and inclusive engagement drives growth across the board:
- Families served benefit from clear guidance, better access, and tailored experiences that build confidence and facilitate informed insurance decisions.
- Advisors gain economically viable opportunities to expand their client base, serving previously underserved markets without compromising profitability or quality of service.
- Carriers and Distributors benefit from higher policy sales, increased market penetration, and stronger relationships with advisors and consumers alike.
By removing structural friction and empowering both advisors and consumers, the industry can make real progress in closing the coverage gap—and bringing financial security to more Canadian households.
Streamlining Distribution: Addressing Fragmentation Through Technology
Today’s environment demands more flexible, connected life insurance distribution—across channels, platforms, and partners. But for many carriers and distributors, existing workflows are still spread across multiple tools and systems, making collaboration and scale more difficult than it needs to be.
These complexities often lead to slower processes, increased advisor workload, and inconsistent customer experiences—challenges that limit growth at a time when agility matters more than ever.
The Power of Interoperability
Modern, API-enabled platforms offer a path forward—without requiring a complete overhaul. By enabling real-time connectivity across carriers, MGAs, and advisors, they help unify fragmented workflows and make it easier to collaborate and transact at scale.
When life insurance distribution systems are interoperable:
- Carriers can simplify operations and launch products more efficiently
- Distributors can connect with multiple carrier systems seamlessly
- Advisors gain a streamlined workspace to manage their full workflow
- Consumers enjoy faster, more consistent service—no matter the channel
This level of integration supports a wide range of distribution models—advisor-led, direct-to-consumer, embedded, and hybrid—making it easier to evolve without adding complexity.
Building a Connected Distribution Experience
When quoting, application submission, needs analysis, and compliance can work together—across systems and partners—the distribution experience becomes dramatically more efficient.
It’s not about replacing existing tools, but about ensuring they integrate smoothly to support a streamlined workflow from start to finish, including:
- Supporting omnichannel distribution across advisor-led, D2C, embedded, and hybrid models
- Automating and aligning compliance requirements across systems
- Connecting data across the ecosystem to drive smarter, faster decisions
By reducing fragmentation and enabling systems to interoperate, every part of the value chain—from carriers to advisors—can operate with greater agility and less friction.
A More Connected Future
Streamlining distribution isn’t about replacing what works—it’s about making everything work better together. By investing in systems that enhance interoperability, the life insurance industry can reduce friction, improve advisor productivity, and deliver stronger, more accessible experiences to Canadian families.
Reversing the Trend Together
The Canadian life insurance industry has an important opportunity to bridge the gap between rising premiums and declining policy sales. By strategically empowering advisors, efficiently addressing the underserved family market, and streamlining distribution processes through technology, we can drive sustainable growth while better protecting Canadian families.
These solutions aren’t just beneficial to carriers—they create value for everyone involved, from advisors and distributors to the families they ultimately serve. It’s an ecosystem-wide approach, ensuring mutual success and collective growth.
Lavvi is here to help. Our proven, API-driven digital distribution platform provides flexible and scalable solutions tailored to your unique distribution strategies. Whether your focus is advisor-led sales, direct-to-consumer channels, hybrid models, or embedded insurance partnerships, Lavvi can help you deliver seamless customer experiences and enhance advisor productivity—in as little as 90 days.
Connect with us today to schedule your personalized demo and discover how our platform can transform your life insurance distribution strategy.