The Fast & Full^® Life App 15% eBundle Bonus Extended until June 30!

INVESTMENTS NEWS

Now available on demand: Empire Life Global Sustainable Equity GIF

Missed our webinar "Empire Life Global Sustainable Equity GIF" on March 25, 2021 or would you like to watch it again? Watch the replay on demand when it is convenient for you and complete the webinar quiz to earn CE credits.

The Empire Life Global Sustainable Equity GIF has received a 5 Globe Morningstar Sustainability Rating. That’s their highest rating, and means that the fund is in the best 10% of lowest ESG risk.

Our Resource Page has many tools to help you learn about this exciting new fund and ways to engage prospective investors!

From the Desk of Ashely Misquitta and David Mann: Sustainable investing @ Empire Life

Since 1923, Empire Life has been committed to helping our clients achieve their financial goals. For our investment business, this means delivering attractive investment returns for our clients over the long term. We also understand that for an increasing number of clients, sustainability is an
important consideration in conjunction with investment performance.

Off the Cuff: Will rising bond yields derail the economy?

For a number of months we have seen bond yields rise. For example, the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield is up from a low of around 0.50% last year at the depths of COVID-19, to over 1.50% recently — Tripled from their previous lows.

Geoff Johnston shares the message behind the recent rise in bond yields in this Off the Cuff video.

Empire Life Dividend Growth GIF:
Portfolio Update

The repositioning of the Empire Life Dividend Growth GIF, coupled with a sharp rally in high quality value and dividend stocks late last year, resulted in strong fund performance in the back half of 2020.

INSURANCE NEWS

Now available: Participating Account Quarterly Summary for Winter 2020 

A history of consistent returns using a conservative investment approach, together with a record of paying a dividend every year, have made Empire Life participating plans very successful over the years.

Despite the extreme market volatility in 2020, our participating fund posted a strong annualized investment rate of return of 9.68%. With a 10 year return of 6.39%, the Empire Life PAR Fund beat the return of the S&P/TSX Composite (6.35%) and did so with a lower standard deviation of 1.8%.

Talk to your clients about the benefits of participating life insurance as an asset class.

Recent enhancements to the Fast & Full^® Life App expected to reduce policy issue times 

We recently introduced a number of enhancements to the award-winning Fast & Full Life App that are intended to reduce processing delays and speed up approvals.

• Enabling MedShare to conveniently share recent fluid orders from another insurance carrier (when available)
• Application Review Page provides the opportunity to review, make changes and confirm client information before proceeding to the health options section
• New COVID-19 Questionnaire with a more intuitive question set intended to speed time-to-issue

Fast & Full applications submitted using eHQ and eContract are issued nearly 3X faster on average vs. paper applications – with over one-third issued in fewer than 5 days!

Now available on demand:
Shared Ownership of Critical Illness Insurance Coverages 

Critical illness insurance policies are often purchased under a shared ownership structure sometimes referred to as a split-dollar arrangement. Such shared ownership structures may take many different forms which may be determined by the facts of each particular situation.

Join David Thomas for this session to explore considerations impacting the structure of the agreement and most appropriate type of coverage. CE credit offer expires June 15, 2021. Quiz will appear after the webinar has been viewed.

Term Conversion to our Permanent Participating Whole Life Plans with
Additional Deposit Option (ADO) 

We have received several requests for clarification regarding the rules for term conversions to EstateMax® or Optimax Wealth® with the ADO. To clarify those rules, we have updated the following support materials:

• Information Circular (CIRE-2020-16 Updated)
• EstateMax & Optimax Wealth product guide (INS-1350)
• ADO Frequently Asked Questions flyer (INS-2746)

These updated materials are now posted on our advisor site.

CORPORATE NEWS

Empire Life announces 2020 results

We announced our fourth quarter and full year 2020 results.

Empire Life now accepts eSignatures for beneficiary changes and ownership changes. See the Information Circular for details.