How Do I Know I am Getting "The Best Rate"?

This is what a Life-Guide printout looks like. Life- Guide is the software I use when producing Life Insurance quotes. Life-Guide tracks insurance rates from every brokerage insurance company in Canada. Life-Guide is how I know which companies have the best rates. Every Insurance Advisor should be able to give you a similar printout. I usually try and use one of the top 10 in the list based on price. I don’t always use the cheapest due to various reasons: service, policy wording, renewal premiums etc. but I try and stay in the top 5 as a general rule.

If you broker doesn’t provide you this kind of market survey, ask them for one. If the company they are recommending isn’t near the top price wise, ask them why not. Sometimes it is a good reason, like mine above. Sometimes its commission related and the agent will make far more money placing all their business with one carrier, if this is the case they probably aren’t looking out for your best interest. Or sometimes it is just as simple as they are not contracted with that particular company. As a broker, I am supposed to provide the best price possible, or at very least the best value. Captive agent companies like, Sun Life, Clarica, London Life and Desjardins are often only allowed to sell their parent company products. These companies rarely show up on these surveys and when they do they are often at the bottom of the pile.

You can even check rates yourself by going to

http://www.winquote.net/ 

WinQuote is a website version of Life-Guide. You can run simple quotes and get accurate results.

One tip about WinQuote is that they automatically quote based on “Super Preferred” health status, in my experience only Olympic athletes get super preferred, for a more realistic rate change health risk to Regular

I find that Life-Guide is slightly more accurate than WinQuote so don’t be surprised if there is a slight discrepancy between the two.