What is the difference between the guaranteed column and the illustrated column?
One column is a promise and the other is arithmetic. The guaranteed column holds the values the insurer is contractually bound to pay whatever its results turn out to be. The illustrated column adds an assumption that the current scale of participations continues. Read the first as a floor and the second as one outcome among many.
What kind of answer this is
- Claim type: Contract fact
- Jurisdiction: Contract dependent
Both columns are produced by the insurer's own software and their headings differ between companies. The contract wording, not the ledger, decides what is guaranteed.
How it works
Both sets of numbers leave one piece of software on one afternoon. The lower set uses only the pricing basis written into the contract, so the insurer owes it in a decade when nothing goes its way. The higher set adds one input, that this year's scale is declared again every year.
The cost or the catch
The distance between the two lines is the size of that input, and readers take it for the size of a benefit. A proposal quoted from the upper line and delivered on the lower one has not failed. Carry the lower figure out of the meeting, because it is the only one anybody owes.
Where this answer may not apply
- An in force illustration run on a contract already issued starts from today's values and its two columns will not match the ones signed years ago.
- A universal life or a non participating contract has no scale of participations, so it prints no second column of this kind at all.
- Some insurers print a third column at a reduced scale, and a document with three columns is not showing three promises.
- A shortened copy prepared for a meeting often carries only the higher column, which is a presentation choice rather than a change to the contract.
What to verify in your own contract
- The guaranteed value at years one, five, ten and twenty, written down beside the premiums paid by each of those years.
- Which column every figure you were quoted in conversation actually came from.
- The assumptions page, which names the scale in force on the day the document was run.
- Whether the same proposal was run a second time at a lower scale, and if not, whether it can be.
Continue to the full explanation
Use the illustration reading guide.
Sources
- The policy contract wording and the illustration assumptions page, insurer specific, verified 2026-08-30
- Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association, illustration guidelines, verified 2026-08-30
Accountability and disclosure
- Written by
- José Salloum
- Professional capacity
- Financial security advisor, Canadian Wealth Creation Centre Inc., operating as IBC Financial
- Reviewed by
- Insurance and contract education tier, reviewed under a licensed insurance professional's own authority
- Jurisdiction
- Contract dependent
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-30
- Version
- 1.0
- Compensation disclosure
- Canadian Wealth Creation Centre Inc., operating as IBC Financial, may receive insurer paid compensation if a policy is purchased. It takes the form of first year compensation followed by renewal compensation, and the amount varies by insurer, product, age, premium, contract design, riders and the arrangement with the managing general agency. No single figure would describe every contract honestly, and none is published here.
- Report a correction
- Info@ibcfinancial.com. Write without a policy number, medical information or account details.
Last reviewed 2026-08-30. By Jose Salloum, Financial Security Advisor.