Best Life Insurance In Canada 2025: A Guide To Get You On The Right Track

When choosing a life insurance policy, look for coverage that suits your financial needs, such as the death benefit amount, premium affordability, and the policy's flexibility. Also, consider the insurer's financial stability and reputation for customer service to ensure reliable claims processing.

Below, you'll find a breakdown of factors that make life insurance a valuable investment, plus a look at a few of the top Canadian providers.

Best life insurance in Canada 2025 winner: TD Life Insurance

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Term Life Insurance

Terms Available

• 10 years
• 20 years
• 100 years

Permanent Life Insurance

Guaranteed Acceptance Life Insurance

Overview Pros & Cons Product Features

Overview

3.6 Genius Rating

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If you’re in the market for life insurance, you may not have considered TD. They’re not one of the largest life insurance companies in Canada, but they are owned by one of Canada’s largest banks. This could make them a good choice for you, especially if you’re already a TD customer. Even if you’re not, they’re worth checking out – it’s easy to get a quote online.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• It’s easy to get an online quote
• They have sample policies online
• It’s convenient to apply online or over the phone
• There’s no sales commission
• Option to convert term to permanent insurance

Cons

• They don’t have as many options as a traditional insurance company
• You don’t get the personal touch
• Policies automatically renew

Product Features

Provinces

ALL

Eligibility

• Canadian citizen
• Age of majority

Why You Want It

Get a quick quote with instant approval + Save up to 10% with discounts

Special Features

• Instant approval for up to $10 million in coverage
• 30-day review period in case you change your mind
• Discounts for having other TD products

Term Life Insurance

Terms Available

• 10 years
• 20 years
• 100 years

Permanent Life Insurance

Guaranteed Acceptance Life Insurance

Universal Life Insurance

 

Our pick for the best life insurance in Canada 2025 is TD Life Insurance, confirming that TD remains a trusted provider for Canadians seeking to protect their loved ones and secure their financial future.

This product features flexible coverage options, including term life, permanent life, and critical illness insurance. TD has a reputation for excellent customer service and straightforward policies, making securing life insurance easy.

How we picked the best life insurance

To evaluate life insurance, we analyze over 10 data points to generate a trustworthy Genius Rating. We consider all aspects of a life insurance policy, including the range of terms, maximum premium, customizable options, customer satisfaction, and additional perks, to assess its overall value. Then, the life insurance policy’s features are rated based on how they stack up against other available options.

What is life insurance in Canada?

Life insurance is an agreement in which your insurer promises to pay a specified amount of money (known as the death benefit) to your beneficiaries upon your death. Typically, your beneficiaries are your spouse and/or children, but the choice is ultimately yours.

In some cases, such as when diagnosed with a terminal illness, certain types of life insurance may allow you to access a portion of the death benefit before passing.

While you're alive, you make regular payments to your insurer, known as premiums. These premiums are generally determined by factors like your age and health—usually, the younger and healthier you are, the lower your premiums will be.

What do you need life insurance for?

The death benefit can then be used to cover things like funeral costs, end-of-life medical bills, estate settlement costs, and any outstanding debts.

Funeral expenses can add up fast, with the average cost in Canada around $8,500, though certain factors, like the size of the funeral, burial costs, etc., can drive prices as high as $25,000.

And as anyone who's experienced the loss of a loved one knows, the costs don't end with the funeral – there are often many other expenses that arise. If you're leaving behind dependents, having life insurance in place can ensure they aren't left without financial support during a difficult time.

How much does life insurance cost in Canada?

On average, a healthy 30-year-old pays between $12 and $14 per month for a 20-year, $250,000 term life insurance policy.

However, like other forms of insurance, your premiums are influenced by a variety of factors, making it difficult to estimate the potential cost.

These are a few of the details that affect the cost of your life insurance:

• Age
• Height and weight
• Your gender
• Overall health and medical history
• Family medical history
• Hobbies
• Whether or not you smoke
• Occupation
• Driving record
• Criminal record
• What you do for fun
• The type and term of your life insurance

Types of life insurance in Canada

Your options for life insurance can essentially be divided into two broad categories: term insurance or permanent insurance.

Term life insurance

As you get older, life insurance premiums rise, meaning you'll pay more each year when your policy renews. This is where term life insurance can be beneficial: it offers coverage for a set period, with premiums averaged out over the entire term.

As a result, your payments remain fixed for the duration of the policy, typically for 10, 20, or 30 years. For example, if you choose a 10-year term, your premiums will only increase every 10 years, and will stay the same in between.

Renewable term life insurance

Renewable term policies will automatically renew at the end of the term, but with a new (higher) premium.

The new premiums tend to be significantly higher and usually require an additional medical exam, so be sure to carefully consider your needs before choosing this type of policy.

Conversion term life insurance

Conversion term life insurance is a policy feature that allows the policyholder to convert their term life insurance into a permanent life insurance policy, such as whole life or universal life, without undergoing a new medical exam.

This option is typically available during a specific period within the term, such as the first few years. It provides flexibility for policyholders who may want lifetime coverage but initially opted for the lower-cost term policy.

Permanent life insurance

Permanent life insurance is similar to term, except the premiums are averaged over your entire life. This way, they'll never go up.

You'll pay a bit more at first than you would with term life insurance, but once you're older you'll pay significantly less. It all balances out at the end – pay more now so you can pay less later.

Whole life insurance

Whole life insurance works by using the additional money you pay when you're younger to build up a reserve, which helps cover your lower premiums in the future. This process is known as "reserving."

If you cancel your whole life policy, the insurance company may refund a portion of your reserve, since they no longer need to cover the cost of your future, lower premiums.

Term to 100 life insurance

Term to 100 life insurance is similar to whole life, except the premiums are lower and you have no option for cash redemption if you cancel it early. Everything, including your premiums and the death benefit, stays stable throughout your life.

Universal life insurance

Universal life insurance is a type of permanent life insurance that offers both a death benefit and a cash value component.

It provides flexible premiums and the ability to adjust the death benefit and savings growth over time. The cash value grows at a variable interest rate and can be used to pay premiums or be borrowed against.

Permanent vs. term life insurance

So which is better – permanent or term life insurance?

Here's a graph from TNinsurance.ca that does a good job at demonstrating the difference between the two types of insurance:

The pink and blue lines indicate how much you'd pay if your coverage was on a yearly basis. Longer terms cost the same in total, but in more of a staircase pattern. This helps keep things steady throughout your life.

But if you want it to be even steadier, the dotted line represents the cost of permanent insurance. As you can see, you start off paying much higher premiums than you would with term insurance, but the cost of term life insurance becomes much higher near the end of your life.

Life insurance calculator – how much do you need?

The general rule of thumb for calculating how much insurance you need looks like this:

(immediate + ongoing expenses) - (money resources) = the coverage you need

Immediate expenses include things like:

• Funeral costs
• Estate settlement costs
• Mortgages
• Outstanding loans and debts

For ongoing expenses, be sure to include your annual salary and multiply it by the number of years you think your dependents need support. Also, consider including future care and education costs for your children.

Resources include:

• Investments and/or assets
• Spouse/partner's income
• Rental income
• Employer coverage
• Personal savings

An example using the Canadian averages

Charlie is a perfectly average Canadian. He's in his mid-30s and owns the home he lives in with his lovely wife, two kids, and fluffy dog.

If he were to look into purchasing life insurance, the first thing he'd want to figure out is what expenses he'd leave behind.

On average, this would be his immediate expenses:

• Funeral cost: $9,150
• Remaining mortgage balance: $198,800
• Household consumer debt: $22,100

Adding these together, Charlie has a total of $230,050 in immediate expenses.

His ongoing expenses include his salary, which is the Canadian average of $63,700. His kids are 8 and 10 years old, so he estimates they'll need support for about 10 years if he were to die. This would mean he'd need about $637,000.

But that's not all. He would also like to prepay his children's university or college education. Because the average cost of Canadian tuition is about $7,000 per year (if they live at home), Charlie is looking at another $56,000 – assuming both children attend university for four years each.

This brings his total ongoing expenses to $693,085.

Now he has to calculate any resources that could be used towards these costs and help out his family.

His wife earns slightly above the average income at $70,000. So to help support their children if Robert were to pass away, she'd be able to contribute $700,000 over 10 years. He also has $15,000 saved up that can help his family get through this difficult time.

His total resources for money comes to $715,000.

So for Charlie, his formula looks like this:

($230,050 + $693,085) - ($715,000) = $208,135 coverage needed

$200,000 would be good coverage for the average Canadian, but it's important that you take a closer look at your personal situation.

List of life insurance companies in Canada

Here are some of the biggest life insurance companies in Canada and the kind of packages they offer.