What documents should I gather before any review of my policy?

How it works

three mechanics, one of them fatal

How wealth actually crosses a generation

1. What passes outside the estate by designation
2. The deemed disposition that taxes almost everything else
3. Whether the estate holds cash to pay that tax
4. Selling assets to pay the tax is the common failure

Six of the seven are records the insurer already holds and will send to the recorded owner on request. The seventh, the illustration from before purchase, is usually only in your own file, and it is the one most often missing. Ask for the six in one written request.

The request itself follows a simple order. The owner of the contract, not the life insured if that is a different person, signs the request, because the insurer will only release the file to the person it has on record as owner. The insurer's service department then pulls the documents from its own system, checks the signature against the form on file, and mails or emails the package to the address it holds, which is why an address kept current matters as much as the request itself. A corporation that owns the contract sends the request on its own letterhead or through the officer authorized to sign for it, since the insurer will not deal with a shareholder who is not also the registered owner.

A contract that has moved from one insurer to another, through a merger or a sale of a block of business, complicates the request only slightly. The current insurer of record, found from the most recent statement received, is still the one to write to, since it now holds the file even where the letterhead on the original contract shows a different company name entirely. The name change itself does not alter a single guarantee written into the contract; it only changes the address the request is mailed to.

What can vary

two layers, both payable

What a wealth manager charges

1. 01Mainly a share of the assets under management
2. 02Hourly, flat fee and retainer structures also exist
3. 03Funds held carry a management expense ratio of their own
4. 04The two layers are separate and both are payable

Two insurers rarely package this the same way. One sends a single bound file within days. Another sends the contract separately from the statement and takes a call to the illustration department for the historical illustration, because that document sometimes sits with a different unit than the one that handles the annual statement.

Provincial location does not change what must be produced, since the duty to hold and release these records comes from the contract and the insurer's own recordkeeping practice rather than from provincial law, but it can change where a complaint goes if the insurer is slow. The wording used also drifts with the year of issue: a contract from the 1990s carries different rider names and a different statement layout than one issued last year, so a reader comparing a hand me down folder to a recent one should not expect matching headings.

Contract wording drives what even exists to send. A term rider added later, a conversion privilege exercised at some point, or a wording change following a settlement can each add a document that a contract without that history never generated. Two households holding contracts from the same insurer and the same year can therefore end up with folders of different sizes, and neither folder is wrong for it.

The cost or the catch

The folder takes a few weeks and no money. What it buys is the ability to test what anybody tells you, including this site. A review conducted on a statement alone can be sincere and still be wrong, because the statement does not contain the provisions that decide most questions.

Keep the copy received from the insurer in its own file once obtained, since reconstructing it a second time costs the same effort as the first.

The catch rarely mentioned concerns the illustration itself. Because it usually exists only on paper, kept in a drawer or a folder from the year of purchase, an insurer that never received a copy has none to send, and no fee will produce a document that was never filed with it. A household that cannot locate its own copy should say so plainly rather than assume the insurer is withholding it, since the two situations call for different next steps.

Who this matters to most

the discipline, not the product

What a household actually does differently

1. 01A capital purchase arrives, a vehicle or a renovation
2. 02The advance is taken against the contract instead
3. 03A repayment schedule the household sets and keeps
4. 04Repayment continues after the debt would have ended
5. 05The money is not free, and interest accrues to the insurer

A household holding a contract issued many years ago, with several riders added since, a change of owner along the way, or a stretch where nobody looked at the file, has the most to gain from assembling the complete seven. Each amendment changes what the contract now says, and a folder missing even one change form can leave a reader working from terms the contract no longer carries.

It matters least to a household with a contract issued recently, unchanged since, held personally rather than through a corporation, and already reviewed within the past year using the same seven items. For that household the exercise confirms rather than corrects, though confirming still has value, since a folder confirmed once does not need to be rebuilt from nothing the next time a question comes up.

A household that inherited a contract, whether through a beneficiary designation or through an estate, sits between these two extremes. The coverage may be simple, but the paperwork trail belongs to someone no longer present to explain it, which is its own reason to gather everything named here rather than rely on a memory of what the deceased once said about the arrangement.

What to ask, and of whom

and what it ends

What a surrender actually pays

1. 01The accumulated cash valueWhat the contract holds.
2. 02Less any surrender chargeProvided by the contract.
3. 03Less anything outstandingOn an advance, with the interest on it.
4. 04What reaches youAny amount above the adjusted cost basis is taxable.

Ask the insurer's service centre, in writing, for the six items it holds, and ask specifically whether the file shows any change of owner or beneficiary that has not yet been confirmed back to the household in writing. A verbal answer over the phone is not the same as a letter that can be kept on file and shown to a professional later.

If the review is being done for tax reporting rather than for general understanding, the same folder should go to the accountant preparing the return, since a change form or an outstanding balance shown in the annual statement can affect what is reported for that year. A change involving ownership, a beneficiary designation, or an estate plan is a question for a lawyer or notary rather than for this page.

Where the review touches a policy loan already taken against the contract, the same written request should ask the insurer to state the outstanding balance and the interest rate applied as of the date of the letter, since both figures move over time and a number remembered from a year ago is not the number that applies today.

What this page will not do

This page describes what to gather. It does not read the documents once gathered and tell a household what they mean for its own situation, because that reading depends on the specific wording in that specific contract, which varies by insurer and by year of issue in ways a general page cannot anticipate.

Where the documents raise a tax question, the accountant preparing the return is the person positioned to answer it from the actual figures. Where they raise a legal question about ownership, an estate, or a beneficiary designation, a lawyer or notary licensed in the household's province is the person who owns that question. This page settles neither.