Not your parents’ life insurance broker

Life insurance isn’t top-of-mind for many people, for the simple reason that most of us don’t like to think about our own mortality. In fact, at this very moment, nearly 40% of Canadians  don’t have any life insurance coverage at all. And for those of us who assume the group life insurance coverage we have through work is enough: If we were to die, our loved ones would receive only two years’ worth of our income, on average. While that doesn’t seem like nearly enough (it isn’t), at the same time, most of us aren’t equipped to make the call on how much life insurance is the right amount.

This is where an experienced pro comes in. We aren’t talking about your parents’ insurance broker, with those seemingly endless in-office meetings, reams of paperwork, and confusing policy options. Online broker PolicyAdvisor.com* takes the dread and drudgery out of the process, by making the life-insurance-buying experience simple, convenient and transparent.

How is an online life insurance broker unique?

Because you can shop for life insurance online with PolicyAdvisor.com, the process is fast. Yet, there’s no compromise on personal attention: PolicyAdvisor.com’s in-house advisors work with clients to find the right coverage and policy that meets their needs. Their advisors are compensated with a set salary, rather than via commission on sales, so there’s no financial motivation for them to push you to buy coverage you don’t really need.

If you’ve ever worked with a life insurance broker before, there are often seemingly endless face-to-face meetings. And if you’ve met more than one, it may seem like they’re all the same, and they don’t give you a lot of options, as each broker may offer products from only four or five insurance companies—at most. PolicyAdvisor.com is trying to change that approach. They’ve partnered with 16 of Canada’s largest life insurance companies, giving you more choice than most traditional brokers.

PolicyAdvisor.com provides more than a dozen quotes, whereas other insurance comparison sites will only provide just a few. Some sites may not even tell you who the potential insurers are, forcing you to call to find out more; they may even sell your data to third-party brokers and agents. In contrast, PolicyAdvisor.com shows the name of every insurer on their reports to clients, and also provides helpful information, such as how long each insurance company has been operating, the company’s financial strength, and wether the policy is renewable or convertible. If you don’t know what certain terms mean, PolicyAdvisor.com provides an explanation, and will even share their comparison notes with you. (They also have a free, no-jargon online magazine for anyone who wants to beef up their knowledge on different types of insurance in Canada.)

What types of insurance does PolicyAdvisor.com offer, and where?

PolicyAdvisor.com offers life, critical illness, mortgage protection and disability insurance. The online broker is registered with and regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FRSA). While PolicyAdvisor.com  currently only sells insurance in Ontario, they plan to expand across Canada over the next few months.

How does it work?

To get started, all you need to do is visit PolicyAdvisor.com on your computer or mobile device. To get a life insurance quote, you have to provide your gender, your date of birth, whether or not you smoke, and whether you’re a Canadian citizen or resident. After that, you have an option to choose immediately how much insurance you want or get help calculating your insurance needs. Then you enter some additional health information to get an even more customized quote. The data-entry process takes about five minutes. Once you sign up for an account with your name, email address and phone number, all of your quotes are displayed and saved on the site—boom, just like that.

So, what’s not to like?

While PolicyAdvisor.com does work with more insurance companies, some aren’t as well known, which may make you less comfortable signing with one of those companies. And having more insurers to choose from can sometimes lead to choice overload, which (blame it on human nature) means some people might decide not to buy at all because there are more than a dozen options to compare.

Bottom line: who might consider PolicyAdvisor.com*?

PolicyAdvisor.com is for someone who wants to save time and money and avoid the hassle of seemingly endless in-person meetings with a traditional insurance broker. It’s also for the digital-savvy consumer who wants a site dedicated to insurance, as well as more options to choose from than what comparison sites have to offer.