When an Application Is Rated, Postponed or Declined

None of these outcomes has to be the last word. A rating can be accepted, turned down, or later reduced on new evidence. A decline at one insurer still leaves other routes, each with a cost. The first jobs are to keep any coverage you already hold in force and to check any deadline on an offer or on temporary insurance; the next is to learn the reason, in writing, before anything else is filed. Your offer, your contract and the law of your province decide your own case; what follows is the general picture.

If a letter has just arrived, start here: - A rated offer in hand? Read its deadline, its conditions and how long the rating runs before you accept. The checklist is in the section on the rated offer. - Postponed? Ask what event or period the insurer is waiting for, and what evidence will let it look again. - Declined? Keep any coverage you already have in force, ask for the reason in writing, and read the first steps below before you apply anywhere else.

What are the four outcomes of a life insurance application?

In plain terms, the insurer can say yes at its standard price or better, yes on changed terms, not yet, or no. Changed terms can mean a rating (a higher price because the insurer expects higher mortality than its standard class assumes), an exclusion for one cause of death, or a smaller amount. "Not yet" is a postponement, which sets the file aside until a stated event or period has passed. "No" is a decline. Only the insurer that underwrote your file can say why it decided as it did, and you are entitled to ask.

Each outcome leaves you different choices.

A changed offer is a counter-offer, and the choice to accept it is yours. Turning down a rated offer is a normal decision and not a failure. Read the next application's questions carefully, though: some ask about coverage offered on other than standard terms, not only about declines, and the answer you give should match the question asked.

What does it mean when an application is rated?

A rating means the insurer will issue the policy, but at a price above its standard rates, because your file shows expected mortality above what its standard class assumes. The coverage offered can be the amount you applied for. What changes is the price, and sometimes the terms that come with it.

Underwriting sorts applicants into classes so that each class pays for the risk it brings. When a file falls outside the standard class, the insurer can price the difference, change the terms, postpone or decline. A rating is the pricing answer. It is why some people who expect a refusal are offered coverage, at a price.

What a rating does beyond the price depends on the product and the insurer. Some riders may not be offered on a rated file. A rating may apply to the base coverage, to coverage added later, or to both. Where the offer is silent on them, ask in writing before you accept.

How is a rating expressed: a table rating or a flat extra?

Two forms are used, and one offer can carry both. A table rating raises the mortality part of the price by a step above standard. A flat extra adds a set dollar amount for each $1,000 of coverage each year, and it can be temporary.

A table rating is labelled with a letter or a number, depending on the insurer. Each step stands for a level of expected mortality above standard, and each insurer sets the size of its own steps and its own labels. That is why a rating from one insurer cannot be converted into another insurer's scale by arithmetic.

A flat extra is charged per $1,000 of coverage, so for the coverage amount and period the offer states, it changes in proportion to the amount of insurance it applies to. Check the offer for how long it runs and how later changes to the coverage are treated. It is used for a risk that can be measured and may be time-limited: a hazardous activity, an occupational exposure, or a period after a treated condition.

Illustrative example (assumed figures chosen for easy arithmetic, not any insurer's rate). Assume an offer on $500,000 of coverage carries a flat extra of $4 per $1,000 a year for five years. The extra is 500 × $4 = $2,000 a year on top of the premium, or $10,000 over the five years, and under the offer's terms it stops after year five. If you cut the coverage to $300,000, the same flat extra would be 300 × $4 = $1,200 a year, because it follows the amount insured. A table rating on the same offer would instead raise the mortality part of the premium by the insurer's step, for as long as the offer says.

What should you check before you accept a rated offer?

A rated offer comes with conditions, and they matter as much as the price. Whether anything is in force before you accept depends on the offer and the contract, not on a general rule. A policy can be written to take effect only on delivery, acceptance and payment of the first premium, and an offer can expire if it is not accepted in time. Read yours, and ask.

In Quebec, article 2425 of the Civil Code says individual life insurance takes effect when the insurer accepts the application, provided that it is accepted without modification, that the initial premium has been paid and that there has been no change in the insurability of the risk since the application was signed. A rated offer is a modification of what you applied for, so nothing is in force on the rated terms until you accept the offer and meet its conditions. In other provinces, the statute and the application set their own conditions. Either way, tell the insurer in writing about any new symptom, test, referral or diagnosis before you accept.

Questions to put to the insurer, or to your advisor, before you sign: - Deadline. By what date must the offer be accepted, and what happens if that date passes? - Delivery and payment. What must happen before coverage starts: a signed delivery receipt, the first premium, a statement that your health has not changed? - Temporary coverage and deposit. If a temporary insurance agreement was issued with the application, when does it end now that a changed offer has been made? If you paid a deposit, is it applied to the new premium, or refunded if you turn the offer down? - Form and length of the rating. Table rating, flat extra or both; at what level; for how many years; and does it apply to riders and to any added coverage? - Riders. Which riders on the original application are excluded or changed, such as a waiver of premium? - Reconsideration. Can the rating be reviewed later, after what period, and on what evidence? - Illustrations. For participating whole life, two comparisons if the insurer can produce them: the same initial death benefit at rated and at standard pricing, and the same premium with each offer's resulting death benefit and values. A rated and a standard illustration at the same premium alone do not isolate the rating, because the death benefit or design can differ.

Keep the offer letter with the policy. It is the document that states when a temporary flat extra ends, and the one you will quote if you ask for reconsideration years later.

Why does an insurer rate a file instead of declining it?

Rating prices a risk that is higher than standard but measurable. Declining refuses a risk the insurer is not prepared to write at any price it offers. The line between them is not severity alone. It is whether the insurer's own mortality data and reinsurance arrangements support a price, and whether that price falls inside the range it chooses to write.

Uncertainty can matter as much as seriousness. A condition diagnosed recently and not yet fully investigated can be harder to price than a serious condition with a long, documented history. The same reasoning can lead to a postponement instead of a decline.

Insurers differ, and they differ by reason. Two insurers reading the same file can reach different answers, because each writes to its own underwriting manual, reinsurance arrangements and claims experience, so check the difference, reason by reason, before a new application goes in.

What is the difference between a postponement and a decline?

A postponement means the insurer will not decide yet. A decline means it has decided, and the answer on this file, for this coverage, is no. A postponement is about timing; a decline is a verdict at that insurer.

A postponement names, or should name, what it is waiting for: the end of a course of treatment, a test result, recovery after surgery, or a period of stability after a diagnosis. The file can be reconsidered once that event has happened and the insurer receives the evidence. It does not reopen by itself. Ask the insurer what it will need and after how long, and put the date in your calendar.

A decline closes the file at that insurer for now. It can be revisited as a new application supported by changed evidence, and the earlier decision stays in that insurer's records.

A postponement is better news than a decline, but both stay on that insurer's file, and some applications ask about postponements too.

What can lead to a rating, a postponement or a decline?

Underwriters look at several kinds of evidence. In each, the detail decides the outcome: how recent, how well controlled, how well documented, and how it combines with the rest of the file.

• Health history. Diagnosed conditions, their treatment, their stability and how recent they are. Much of the evidence comes from the paramedical exam and lab work, described in the medical and what it measures.
• Build. Height and weight together, read against the insurer's own table. It is one of the factors that can genuinely change.
• Family history. Certain conditions in parents or siblings before a stated age, where the form asks; see family history on an application.
• Tobacco and nicotine use, as the form defines it, covered in smoker status and the premium.
• Occupation, activities and travel. A hazardous job, aviation, diving, climbing, motorsport, or residence or travel abroad, each underwritten on its own questionnaire; see travel, residency and occupation.
• Driving record. Impaired driving convictions and serious or repeated offences, weighed by how recent they are.
• Finances. The amount applied for, compared with income, net worth and purpose. A decline for this reason concerns the amount, not your health; see financial underwriting and insurable interest.

No figures are given here: the effect of each depends on the whole file and on the insurer's manual, so a rating quoted for a condition in general would describe no one.

What must you disclose, and what may an insurer not ask?

Start with the protection. The federal Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (read on Justice Laws Canada, 28 September 2026) prohibits anyone from requiring you to undergo a genetic test, or to disclose the results of one, as a condition of entering into or continuing a contract, or of its terms (sections 3 and 4). It also prohibits refusing you because you declined to take a test or to share results. The rest of the health questions remain, as explained in the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act and what an insurer may ask.

Within that limit, the duty to disclose is broad. In Quebec, article 2408 of the Civil Code requires you to declare every circumstance you know that is likely to materially influence the insurer in setting the premium, appraising the risk or deciding to cover it, and not only what the printed questions ask. The common law provinces' Insurance Acts put a comparable duty on the applicant and the person insured to disclose the material facts they know.

Earlier decisions are part of that duty. An application may ask whether you have ever been rated, postponed or declined, or offered coverage on other terms, sometimes within a stated look-back period. Where the form asks, answer accurately and completely, with the insurer's name and the date if you have them. Where a form is silent, remember that in Quebec article 2408 is not limited to the printed questions, and that elsewhere the Insurance Acts also reach the material facts you know; in every province, mentioning the earlier decision is the careful course.

An inaccurate answer puts the new contract at risk. If a misstatement was material, the insurer can seek to set the contract aside while the insurance has been in force for less than two years. After two years, an innocent or careless misstatement no longer supports that, but fraud is outside the limit. In the common law provinces, the two years count only during the lifetime of the person insured. In Quebec, article 2424 sets the two-year rule, with an exception for disability insurance where the disability began in the first two years, and article 2434 makes the period run again after a reinstatement. The details are in misrepresentation on an application.

What is recorded, and does a decline follow you to the next insurer?

Two records matter, and they hold different things. The first is the insurer's own file. The insurer that assessed your application keeps its decision, its reasons and the evidence it gathered, under its records policy and the privacy law that applies to it. That file stays with that insurer.

The second is MIB, a member-owned information exchange based in the United States that life insurers in Canada can join. With the authorization you sign on the application, a member insurer may report coded information it finds significant, such as a medical condition, a hazardous activity or an adverse driving record, and may check MIB when you apply elsewhere. MIB states that its codes do not indicate what action another member took: not an approval, not a denial and not a rating. It also states that its codes are not used to decide eligibility, and that members may not make an underwriting decision based on your MIB file without further investigation.

So the MIB record does not carry the decline to the next insurer. What carries a prior decline forward is the first insurer's own file, if you apply there again, and the next application's own question about earlier declines or ratings. A code at MIB can lead a new insurer to ask questions or request records about the underlying fact; your accurate answer to the question about earlier decisions does the rest. MIB's own description (read 28 September 2026) also indicates that a member insurer may see that other members made inquiries about you in the past two years. That shows that you applied, not what was decided.

How long each record lasts is different. MIB says it reports information from the past seven years. The insurer's own retention follows its records policy and privacy law. In Quebec, section 11 of the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector requires information used to make a decision about you to be kept for at least one year after the decision (read on LégisQuébec, 28 September 2026). That is a minimum, not a limit.

How do you get and correct your MIB file?

As MIB describes on its own website (read 28 September 2026), Canadian consumers can see and correct what it holds. Request your file through its consumer section or its phone line.

• One free copy a year. MIB provides your consumer file, if one exists, free once a year on request.
• Another after an adverse decision. If an insurer's adverse underwriting decision letter says an MIB record influenced its underwriting and your application was rated or declined as a result, you can get an additional copy at no charge.
• Inquiries. For Canadian consumers, the file lists member insurers that made an inquiry about you over a two-year period.
• You may have no file. MIB says you have a file only if you applied to a member in the past seven years and information of underwriting significance was found.
• Disputes. If an entry is inaccurate or incomplete, ask MIB to reinvestigate it, and keep a copy of your request and of its reply.

Check your MIB file before a new application, not after it. An error corrected at the source is worth more than any explanation built around it.

Can you find out why, and have your file corrected?

You can ask, and you should, in writing. Name the decision, its date and the application number, and ask what the decision relied on. A precise request gets a usable answer.

Two rights are easy to confuse, so keep them apart. The first is a right of access to your personal information: what the insurer holds about you, and correction of what is wrong. The second would be a full explanation of the underwriter's reasoning, and that is not the same thing. Read plainly (a reading, not a legal opinion), the privacy Acts give the first; they do not promise the second in every case, although an insurer can state its reason when asked.

Which privacy law applies depends on where you live and on the insurer: - Federal. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Its Schedule 1 principle on individual access lets you ask what an organization holds about you and challenge its accuracy and completeness. - Quebec. The Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector. Section 27 requires an enterprise, on request, to confirm that it holds personal information about you, communicate it and let you have a copy. Section 28 lets you require that information that is inaccurate, incomplete or equivocal be rectified. Section 30 requires the request to be in writing, to the person in charge of the protection of personal information. - British Columbia and Alberta. Each province has its own Personal Information Protection Act, which gives comparable rights of access and correction for the organizations it covers.

Quebec adds one more right that can matter here. Under section 12.1 of its private sector Act, an enterprise that makes a decision based only on automated processing of your personal information must tell you so. On request, it must also tell you the personal information used, the reasons and principal factors that led to the decision, and your right to have that information corrected, and you can submit observations to a staff member able to review the decision. Whether an underwriting decision was made that way is a question to ask the insurer.

Medical detail can come by a different road. Where a medical report drove the decision, an insurer may release it to a physician you name rather than to you directly. Ask which route it uses.

Errors happen, and they can be fixed: a test value transposed, a family history put against the wrong relative, a condition recorded as diagnosed when it was investigated and ruled out. Send the correction with documents, and ask the insurer to confirm in writing what it changed.

What should you do first after a decline or a rated offer?

Work through these steps in order.

1. Keep your existing coverage in force. Do not cancel or let lapse any policy, group coverage or term contract until a replacement is actually in force.
2. Check every deadline. A rated offer can expire, and temporary insurance issued with the application can end. Note the dates, and ask what happens to any temporary coverage and to any deposit paid with the application.
3. Ask for the reason in writing, with the records the decision relied on.
4. Request your personal information from the insurer, and your MIB file, and check both for errors.
5. Correct what is wrong, in writing, with documents.
6. Learn the reason before you reapply. A new application filed without knowing the reason can add another decision to disclose where a form asks, without changing anything the underwriter reads.
7. Then choose a route, using the table that follows.

What routes remain after a decline or a rating?

Several, and they can be combined. Each has a trade-off. The right one depends on the reason for the decision, the amount you need and how soon you need it.

Disclosure: Canadian Wealth Creation Centre Inc., which publishes this site, is paid commissions by insurers if a policy is later bought through it, and you can ask any licensed representative, or the insurer directly, instead.

An informal inquiry can be worth doing before any second formal application, if time allows. Whether it is available, and on what terms, depends on the insurer: ask whether a particular insurer accepts a non-binding inquiry that does not identify you, what information it needs, and whether submitting it creates any record. Where it is accepted on those terms, it is not an application and not a decision on your file. It gives your advisor a sense of which insurer, if any, might view the reason differently, before any application in your name goes in. Never let an offer deadline pass while you wait for an answer.

Conversion rights can be lost by simply letting a date pass. If you hold a convertible term policy, or group coverage with a conversion privilege, read the clause now: the last date to convert, the plans available and the amount you can convert without evidence. How conversion works is explained in converting term or a new contract and in term insurance.

Waiting is a route too. Where the reason is recency, such as a recent diagnosis, surgery or conviction, time and documented stability can change how the file reads. Ask the insurer what period and what evidence it would want to see.

Waiting has its own costs. You will be older at issue, which usually means a higher premium for the same coverage; new health events can arise in the meantime; and any need without coverage stays uncovered until a contract is in force. One common sequence is to accept the rated coverage now and ask for reconsideration, or apply again, later, once the evidence has changed. Each later change or replacement needs its own suitability review, and the rated coverage stays in force until the new contract is actually in force.

When is reconsideration worth asking for?

When something material has changed and you can document it: weight reduced and kept off, a condition treated and stable for a period the insurer considers meaningful, a licence restored, an activity given up, a hazardous job left behind. How and when an insurer will reconsider is set by its own practice and by the terms of your offer or contract, so ask it to explain its process in writing.

A temporary flat extra works differently. Where the offer states an end date, the flat extra stops on that date under the offer's terms, without a request. The date is in the offer letter, which is one more reason to keep it.

A table rating, or a flat extra with no end date, stays as the offer states unless it is reconsidered. Ask whether the insurer will review it on request, after what period and on what evidence, and whether it ever reviews ratings on its own. Put the answer with your policy.

The outcome is not guaranteed. The insurer can remove the rating, reduce it or leave it in place, and it can ask for current medical evidence, which means current disclosure. A request sent before the evidence exists gives the underwriter nothing new to weigh, so ask what evidence will count before you send it.

What does a rating do to a participating whole life contract?

It raises the cost of the same coverage for as long as the rating runs. What it does to the guaranteed values, the dividends and any paid-up additions depends on how the product applies the rating, and products differ. Ask before you accept, not after.

One way a rating can be applied is as a separate extra premium that buys no cash value, leaving the guaranteed cash value schedule as it would be for a standard life. Whether your product works that way is set by the contract. Either way, the rating is part of the price of obtaining the offered coverage; it does not, merely by being paid, increase the face amount, and whether it touches guaranteed values or illustrated dividends depends on the contract. At a fixed budget, a rated contract can therefore show lower values for the same outlay than a standard one. The early years of any contract already sit below premiums paid, for reasons that apply to every contract; a rating can make that shape steeper.

Before you compare policy values at all, establish the coverage you need, for how long, and a premium you can keep paying in a bad year as well as a good one. Where appropriate, ask for a comparable term quote as well, so you can see what the coverage alone would cost.

Then ask for three things in writing: two comparisons side by side, if the insurer can produce them, one at the same initial death benefit with rated and standard pricing and one at the same premium with each offer's resulting death benefit and values; confirmation of whether the rating touches the guaranteed cash value schedule; and confirmation of how the paid-up additions rider and any other rider are treated on the rated file. The rider question matters where a contract is designed for accumulation, because the split between base premium and paid-up additions can weigh differently once a rating applies. That arithmetic belongs on the illustration, as described in what an insurance premium is made of.

Dividends keep their nature. They are not guaranteed, and they are declared at the discretion of the insurer's board, which can raise or lower them. A rating does not make them guaranteed, and a rated policy may belong to a different dividend class from a standard one, so ask the insurer whether it does. Whether and how the rating changes the amount credited to your policy depends on the product, so ask for the illustration to show it.

If you had planned a participating policy and were rated or declined, you may ask whether another family member could be the person insured instead. That requires an insurable interest in that person's life or the written consent of the person insured, and the insurer then underwrites that person on their own file, not yours. The rules are explained in financial underwriting and insurable interest.

The guaranteed values written into the contract remain an obligation of the insurer. They depend on its solvency, and no government backs them. Every life insurer authorized to sell insurance in Canada must belong to Assuris. If a member fails, Assuris protects up to $1,000,000 or 90% of the promised death benefit, whichever is higher, and up to $100,000 or 90% of the promised cash value, whichever is higher, calculated on the net values after any policy loans (Assuris, whole life protection, page modified 5 July 2025, read 28 September 2026).

The drawbacks

A rating can outlast its reason. Where a rating has no end date, it runs as the offer states until it is reconsidered, and an owner who never asks may keep paying it after the reason has gone. Mark the date to ask again.

There is no honest way to keep a prior decision from a question that asks about it, and an inaccurate answer can cost more than the decision it hid.

A rushed second application can add a decision to the record without adding evidence to the file.

The cost is not only money. Underwriting is intrusive, an adverse letter can arrive with little explanation, and getting records, correcting them and asking for reconsideration can take months.

Simplified and guaranteed issue trade price and amount for fewer questions. Compare their cost for the coverage you need, and with any rated offer you hold, which may cost more; read any early-years limit on the death benefit.

Who this concerns, and who it does not

It concerns you if you hold a rated offer and have not checked the form, level and length of the rating; if you hold a rated policy issued years ago and your circumstances have changed; if your file was postponed and you took it as a refusal; or if you are about to file a second application after a first one went badly.

It will not help much if you were approved at standard rates, and it cannot change a decision where nothing in your situation has changed. In that case, the useful work is on the routes that do not depend on the original decision: group coverage, conversion rights you already hold, simplified or guaranteed issue, or waiting until the evidence has changed.

Questions to ask, and who answers them

In summary

A rating prices a higher risk, as a table rating, a flat extra or both, for as long as the offer states. A postponement waits for a stated event and can be reconsidered once the insurer has the evidence. A decline ends the matter at that insurer for now.

The records do not work the way it may seem. MIB codes do not show what another insurer decided. A prior decline travels through the first insurer's own file and through the next application's own question, which you answer accurately where it is asked.

You can ask for the reason, see and correct your personal information and your MIB file, and choose among several routes, each with its own cost. The rest of how these contracts work is set out in policy basics.