Empire Life is pleased to announce the latest additions to our product portfolio Optimax Wealth™ and Solution ART. Optimax Wealth™, our newest participating life insurance plan is designed to offer early cash values and competitive long term values. Solution ART is our newest term insurance plan designed for clients wanting affordable short-term insurance coverage now.

Join us to discover what makes Emblem GIF Portfolios stand apart from the competition. Register for an online demo!

There has never been a better time to try Fast & Full than now. But don’t just listen to us, find out what advisors are saying about Fast & Full by watching an advisor video. If you haven’t checked it out yet, register for our test website or schedule a personal demo to experience for yourself what advisors are talking about!

Read the interview with Ian Hardacre, Fund Manager, and discover how the Empire Life Dividend Growth GIF harnesses the power of dividend-paying stocks for higher income and growth potential. Learn more.

With this release we will be completing the move from two illustration systems to one!  This will make creating sales illustrations for our life and critical illness products, Simple Fast & Easy. You will be able to illustrate combinations of all of our products on one system and one illustration report. For the full details on this update, please see information circular 2016-17.

Due to changes in the Canadian Income Tax Act mortality tables will be updated January 2, 2017. There will be no change to the gross amount of income that a prescribed annuity issued by Empire Life generates. What will change is the taxable portion of each prescribed annuity payment, with a higher portion of each payment being taxable under the new formula. To be eligible for the 2016 formula for prescribed annuity taxation all applications and money must be received in good order by December 30, 2016. All applications and/or money received after December 30th, 2016 will receive the 2017 formula for prescribed annuity taxation. This includes letters of commitment that were submitted in December and funds received in 2017; the taxable portion will be re-calculated based on the new rates.

Did you know that the annuity quote guarantees the interest rate used to calculate your annuity payment, not the income amount.  The income quoted may vary if any of the quote details (i.e., purchase date, income starting date, date of birth etc.) used in the calculation change.

Starting January 1, 2017, changes to Canada’s Income Tax Act will affect the taxation of life insurance policies in Canada and change the exempt test rules. Please visit our website for a summary of all the changes that Empire Life is making to its product line-up to prepare for this change.

We have updated our commission schedule to include product commissions for Optimax Wealth and Solution ART. 

Please see our website for the most recent schedules, and see information circular 2016-22 for more details.

We have identified some errors on the French version of the Life and Health Insurance Application dated October 2016. Please review information circular 2016-21 for more information.

We have started mailing letters to customers who have registered savings plans (such as RRSP, LIRA) and will have reached the age of 71 by the end of this year. These customers must collapse their registered savings plans by the end of 2016.  The letters explain what options are available to them and also indicate that their contract default will be applied if we have not received instructions by December 28th, 2016.

Older products, that do not allow for a registered savings plan to registered income fund conversion, will mature if instructions are not received by December 28th, 2016.  New registered income fund applications must be submitted for these accounts in order to move the proceeds of a customer’s registered savings plan to a new registered income fund.

Customer letters with copies to advisors have already started getting mailed out for all impacted registered savings plans administered at Empire Life.

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Ron Friesen, CPA, CA has joined Empire Life as Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer, effective October 3, 2016. Read the news release.

In order to have access to your clients’ personal information collected on the application and during the evaluation or underwriting process, clients must sign optional section 9.6 of the application? If that section of the application is not signed, Empire Life cannot disclose this information to advisors.