Two in three Canadians, or 68%, now report having at least one type of life insurance, up from 58% in 2025, according to the second Life Insurance Gap Report from PolicyMe, conducted with Angus Reid.
Despite that jump, nearly one in four Canadians (24%) remain not confident or unsure their families would be financially secure if they died unexpectedly, and among those with children specifically, that figure rose to 30%.
Most of the coverage increase came from younger Canadians. Coverage among those aged 18 to 34 rose from 48% to 67% year over year, and among Gen Z specifically it jumped from 30% to 58%, a shift PolicyMe attributed partly to more of that generation reaching milestones like homeownership and starting families.
"It's encouraging to see more Canadians securing life insurance this past year, especially younger Canadians," said Andrew Ostro, PolicyMe's CEO and co-founder. "But having a policy isn't the same as feeling secure. It's worth taking a few minutes to check whether your coverage is enough, rather than assuming it is, especially if your primary source of life insurance is employer-based coverage."
The report's cost and confidence findings point to a workplace coverage problem specifically.
Half of insured Canadians (50%) hold their coverage through a workplace group plan, and more than a quarter of those with workplace coverage do not know how much coverage they actually have. Among those who do know, the most commonly reported amount was $100,000 to $299,999 -- a figure that may not cover a mortgage balance or years of dependent support in many Canadian housing markets.
That gap between having coverage and having enough of it shows up clearly in separate, independent research. A MyChoice study drawing on Statistics Canada and other data found Canadian households hold an average of $509,000 in life insurance against an estimated need of $595,000, with Ontario showing the widest provincial shortfall: households there need close to $794,000 on average but hold only about $552,000, a gap exceeding 30%.
Read alongside PolicyMe's findings, the pattern is consistent: more Canadians are getting some coverage, but the amount many are getting, particularly through employer plans, likely isn't closing the actual protection gap.
Among Canadians without coverage, 30% cited cost, 26% said they had no debts, dependents or other financial obligations, and 19% said they simply hadn't thought about it. Fifteen percent (15%) said rising living costs had specifically delayed their purchasing plans, up from 10% in 2025, though PolicyMe noted that year's comparison figure included both uninsured respondents and those unsure of their coverage status, making the two years not perfectly comparable.
Perhaps more striking for insurers and brokers trying to close this gap: 51% of uninsured respondents said nothing would make them likely to purchase coverage in the next five years, a hard floor of disengagement that no amount of pricing or product innovation addresses on its own.
Income remains a strong predictor of coverage. Among all Canadians, 79% of those with household income of $100,000 or more reported having life insurance, compared to just 50% of those earning under $50,000, and British Columbia had the highest uninsured rate among provinces at 39%, against 28% in Atlantic Canada.
PolicyMe's own data on when Canadians actually buy points to where the advisory conversation should focus: 79% of term life applications cited family well-being as a motivating factor, and 42% cited a mortgage specifically, meaning major life events remain the trigger point worth targeting proactively rather than waiting for clients to self-identify as underinsured.
For brokers and advisors working with clients who have workplace coverage, the report's most actionable finding may be the simplest: a large share of employees don't know their own coverage amount, and closing that basic information gap, encouraging clients to check their group plan balance and compare it against actual financial obligations, is a low-cost conversation that could meaningfully shift the confidence numbers this report is tracking.
