Predicting the future of the life insurance industry is a notoriously difficult game. Even in the world of Insurtech, we are acutely aware that we are building "tomorrow’s legacy tech" today. However, the digital transformation we’ve witnessed since 2020 has been immense. Just five years ago, managing an in-force block of business was a manual grind; advisors had to contact carriers individually, request data, and painstakingly compile it into Excel or use platforms like LDA to clean it into something workable.
Fast forward to 2026, and we now have real-time data feeds of in-force policies,including API cash value updates, delivered directly from life insurance carriers. Rather than attempting to predict where the finish line is, I sat down with three industry leaders, Erin McKee, Henry Korenblum, and Graham Bergsma, to discuss the trends they are seeing on the ground and how these shifts will redefine the Canadian market throughout 2026.
Canadian business owners are moving away from generalist advice toward highly specialized tax-efficient succession. Henry Korenblum identifies the Capital Dividend Account (CDA) as the linchpin of this movement, but its importance has skyrocketed due to recent legislative changes.
Henry Korenblum identified the ongoing great wealth transfer as a significant trend, leading clients to seek professional advice on estate planning and tax-efficient wealth transition. Henry emphasized that because of the wealth transfer, life insurance has evolved into an attractive strategic corporate vehicle. By leveraging more corporately owned policies, proceeds are received tax-free by a corporation and credited to the CDA, allowing business owners to extract capital from their companies tax-free. Korenblum describes this as the "holy grail of tax planning."
The second factor Henry highlighted is a major legislative win for executors: the extension of subsection 164(6). In the past, executors had a "12-month sprint" to realize capital losses in an estate to carry them back against the deceased’s terminal tax bill.
"The government has extended this window from one year to three years after death," Korenblum explains. "This provides vital breathing room for corporate-owned life insurance, making it an even more effective 'lubricant' for the gears of an estate plan."
This 36-month window allows for a more thoughtful wind-up of a corporation. Instead of a "fire sale" of assets to trigger the loss carryback within a year, executors can now strategically use insurance proceeds and the CDA over a longer period to offset terminal taxes, ensuring the family retains more of the hard-earned corporate surplus.
The debate over whether AI will replace advisors will be a debate that continues for years. However Graham Bergsma, founder of G3 Wealth, does not view it as a debate, instead that AI isn't replacing the advisor; it’s replacing the outdated advisor.
According to Bergsma, the digital side of the industry is now using metadata to identify buying profiles and deliver products with unprecedented speed.
"AI will push out a lot of the advisors who hold to more traditional methods,” Bergsma says. “Clients seeking solutions won’t necessarily start with a traditional agent. AI and machine learning can increasingly recognize buying intent and provide a simple, compliant, and frictionless pathway from intention to action, often with a cleaner and more intuitive user experience. The firms that utilize AI to enhance that experience, rather than just maximizing profit, will be the ones that succeed."
For the modern advisor, AI is the engine that can handle the efficiencies required for data-heavy lifting of underwriting, allowing the human to focus on the empathy and connection of building a strategy together with a client that AI cannot yet replicate.
Perhaps the most visible shift in the 2026 Canadian landscape is the blurring of lines between tax professionals and insurance specialists. We are witnessing a transition of high-level accountants moving into the insurance space.
Erin McKee, a prominent industry leader at Manulife Wealth, has observed this transition firsthand.
"I’ve observed that the line between 'tax professional' and 'insurance advisor' has started to diminish," McKee explains. " I already see more CPAs moving over to the life insurance industry, some former partners transitioning and seeing massive growth within top-producing firms. Accountants have all the intel by seeing the full picture of particularly corporate clients assets, and planning. So this, in addition to the mandatory retirement age, are causing this trend."
This trend is driven by two main factors in the Canadian market:
The success of a life insurance practice in 2026 depends on the ability to bridge the gap between tax law and technology. Whether it is leveraging the new 164(6) extensions and increasing corporately owned policies as Henry Korenblum suggests, closing the "AI Gap" as Graham Bergsma mentioned, or the migration of CPA’s to life insurance firms as Erin McKee observes, the message is clear: Complexity is the new opportunity.
The modern advisor is no longer just a salesperson; they are a complete financial strategist helping Canadians navigate the most significant wealth transfer in history.