Canada Life Life Insurance Reviews

We are members of the Federal Retires Association and the government changed our plan from SunLife to Canada Life. It has been terrible ordeal trying to deal with Canada Life. Calling on the phone guarantees you ate
at least a 2 hour wait to be told the can't give you an answer and will get their team to get back to you which never happens. Worst Insurance company I have ever had to deal with. You are better off paying out of pocket. It is cheaper and less frustrating. October 2023

Be careful when they say they will cover something. Because they won't. They will ask you for so much information without explanation of what they actually need to avoid paying for them. It's been 6 months. I've talked to 7 agents. They snail mail everything. Are disorganized with claims and emails. You can't talk to the person who is actually doing the claim and demanding information. Honestly no insurance is better then this company.

The online portal is inaccurate and does not provide you with up-to-date information on your claims. You are required to call customer service with a lengthy wait (an hour +) to inquire about the status of your claim. The customer service representative's knowledge is very limited and often results in multiple transfers to other representatives before getting an answer.

I am forced to use this company for now because my employer decided to use them for our health benefits. However, if you have the choice, I strongly encourage you to seek a different insurance company because this level of incompetence and lack of transparency is something I’ve never seen before in an insurance company.

I have been trying to get information regarding my life insurance policy for over two months now. My advisor is incompetent. After over 20 emails and numerous phone calls, I have nothing. No response. I asked him to change my address also and…he didn’t…I did when I called. Then a week after he emails me saying he changed my address??? No… he is negligent and I am considering terminating my life insurance policy and getting it somewhere else.

As a practitioner, we deal with this company a lot, specifically direct billing through Telus Health. Here are two areas of improvement in which they know about, but seem to have no interest in improving upon.

1. Commonly the billing submission is termed as "under review" and not accepted. However, their software and practitioner interface does not allow you the check on the "under review" submission and requires you to call.

2. There must only be a total of two people working the helpline, and they must have severe cognitive delays because in the rare chance you get to talk to someone without waiting an hour, they promptly transfer you to the wrong department or drop your call.

In all honesty, this seems like an intentional way of reducing the volume of claims and saving the company money- ie- Annoy the shit out the practitioners so they won't direct bill, and hope the cost of paying out of pocket for some patients (then being reimbursed) is prohibitive for some of the poor souls that have their subpar insurance.

PS- 1/5 stars was given because 0/5 stars was not an option

There aren't enough words or examples to describe how abhorrent Canada Life is as a benefits provider. If there were zero or negative stars available, I would rate them as such.

My company has used Canada Life as our group benefits provider for several years, and I can only assume that it's because they are the cheapest possible option on the market. There are literally no redeeming factors to their service.

A few highlights of my experience include:

-Inordinately Long Wait Times: I've often waited on hold for 1.5 hours, only to be disconnected due to "system issues".

-Segmentation of Expertise: Each customer service rep can only assist you with one type of claim. If you need help with the Drugs vs. Health vs. Healthcare Spending Account, be prepared to talk to three different individuals, with a lengthy wait time in between each. You will also have to provide your identifying credentials every single time.

-Incompetent Staff: 75% of the customer service reps have no idea how to do their job. Asking them a simple question requires them to put you on hold for another 5-10 minutes while they investigate your query. They will rarely have a response on the spot and will claim that they'll call you back after they look into the matter further. Don't hold your breath.

-Processing Times: On average, it will take 4+ weeks for your claim to be processed. Their ongoing excuse is that they are short-staffed due to the pandemic. Cry me a river. Maybe they should hire better staff and pay them adequately. (See "Incompetent Staff" above.)

-Claim Errors: Your claim is finally processed - great! Not so fast, as you will need to review the results with a fine-toothed comb. Their team makes numerous "data entry errors", resulting in you only receiving a fraction of what you're owed. Time to follow up with incompetent reps after long wait times, thus causing the entire cycle to repeat itself.

I have no words of advice, other than to encourage your employer to avoid Canada Life AT ALL COSTS. My husband's company uses a different carrier, and the experience is the complete opposite.

I called Canada Life after waiting on hold for 25 mins, the agent could not find me in the system and she tried by my name asking me if it’s a new policy I said no. I said this is taking me a lot of effort to call in as I have Covid. She put a recording through saying there is a system error and it hung up on me, making me back call in again.

My work just switched over to this insurer for some insane reason, and I am trying to get enrolled and registered, and not only was I on hold for two hours on the phone with them before being disconnected, I also went through ridiculous chat sessions with their "technical help". It appears they only have two agents to do the chat for the entire company -- Pratik and Nathalie. Pratik spent half an hour not answering my questions before disconnecting the chat on me, and now every time I happen to get Pratik on the chat, he automatically just disconnects the chat. He seems to be unable to answer basic questions about registration and enrollment when I did speak to him. Both of them just enter pre-written responses that do not answer any questions directly and it takes about an hour to get any basic answer to your question. I've enrolled with them but it seems that my plan isn't working at the pharmacy still, and there is no one to assist with this. Seems like that isn't the only problem I'm going to have with this company according to this horrid reviews.

I was just on the phone with a representative from Canada Life. I have an account through work and was looking at my dashboard while chatting with her. She couldn't pull up my account. She asked to put me on hold. I was on hold for over 30 minutes before she hung up on me. I don't know what kind of customer service this is. It shouldn't be that hard to find my account.

My employer's group plan changed to Canada Life this year. It has been a total mess, driven entirely by Canada Life's deliberate creation of barriers to slow down claim entry and processing - it is paper-based, lacks clear instructions and the forms are a maze. When you finally run the gauntlet and get a claim in, it sits there for weeks necessitating multiple calls to the joke of a contact centre (45+ minute waits) and unhelpful, obtuse representatives. Avoid.