Empire Life's second-quarter results point to something more consequential for advisors than the dividend declaration accompanying them: a genuine rebound in Canadian segregated fund demand, arriving just as new rules force insurers to spell out embedded fees directly on client statements for the first time.
Total new premiums into Canadian segregated funds reached nearly $20 billion in 2025, the highest level in several years, up from $16 billion in 2024 and $11.7 billion in 2023, according to ISS Market Intelligence. After years of net redemptions totalling billions of dollars, as clients moved toward lower-cost mutual funds and ETFs, the segment posted positive net flows of $287 million in 2025, a modest number but a genuine reversal for a product category that had been losing ground on cost and flexibility grounds.
Empire Life's own results reflect that shift directly. The insurer reported common shareholders' net income of $83 million for the second quarter, up from $32 million a year earlier, with the company crediting "high customer demand for our new segregated funds" as a specific driver. "We're pleased with our very strong second quarter, driven by positive market impacts. Sales in Wealth Management products continue to increase," said Mark Sylvia, president and chief executive of Empire Life.
That renewed demand is arriving at an awkward moment. Beginning with 2026 reporting, due to reach consumers in 2027, insurers and dealers will be required to provide enhanced annual statements disclosing segregated funds' total costs, embedded fees and investment performance, a level of transparency the product category hasn't previously had to compete on.
For advisors, that's a specific, time-limited opportunity rather than a distant regulatory footnote. The traditional seg fund pitch, guaranteed death benefits, creditor protection, estate planning bypass, has typically been made without a client seeing the full embedded cost laid out in one place. From next year, that changes. Advisors currently riding renewed client interest in seg funds should be building the fee conversation into their pitch now, proactively, rather than waiting for a client to see the number on a statement and ask why they weren't told sooner. Getting ahead of that shift is likely to matter more to client retention over the next two years than the guarantees themselves.
Empire Life's board also declared cash dividends on its common shares ($22.84 per share) and two series of preferred shares, payable in September and October 2026, alongside a Life Insurance Capital Adequacy Test ratio of 153%, comfortably above OSFI's supervisory target. Those figures speak to the insurer's balance-sheet strength rather than anything an advisor needs to act on directly.
