Amalgamation

No – you won’t have to sign anything, fill out forms or provide any additional information or paperwork to preserve your rights under your policy on amalgamation. This happened automatically. 

Amalgamating into a single company will help to position us for future growth and to continue to meet the needs of our customers. The amalgamation is expected to:

• Create operating efficiencies and simplify our capital structure – allowing for more efficient use of capital. 
• Simplify our governance structure and improve how responsive we can be to future business, capital, financial, regulatory, accounting and other changes, in a rapidly changing environment. 
• Enable the combination of the companies’ open participating accounts, resulting in a larger Canadian open participating account, with the opportunity for greater risk diversification and reduced regulatory and participating account management expenses. 

No.  You don’t have to sign anything, fill out forms or provide any additional information or paperwork to preserve your rights under your policies and contracts. All rights, liabilities, and obligations of The Great-West Life Assurance Company or London Life Insurance Company under any policy or contract became the rights, liabilities, and obligations of The Canada Life Assurance Company as of Jan. 1, 2020. This happened automatically.

The only change is that your policies and contracts are now policies and contracts of The Canada Life Assurance Company.

We are still busy working on updating our websites, materials, and forms to reflect the amalgamation, but it’s a big job!  This is why you may continue to see references to The Great-West Life Assurance Company and London Life Insurance Company, including abbreviated forms of their names and branding. We expect the update to take 3–5 years to complete.

Until we’re done, all references to The Great-West Life Assurance Company or London Life Insurance Company and any abbreviated forms of their names (such as Great-West Life or London Life) in any materials – whether online or in print – are now to be understood as meaning The Canada Life Assurance Company.

However, the name of our parent public holding company, Great-West Lifeco Inc., won’t change.

You will continue to be serviced by the same teams and can work with the same advisor you know and trust. Amalgamation positions us to continue improving our customer service levels. It won’t affect your existing policies or accounts with us.

No.  You can keep using the same mailing addresses you always have.

Effective Jan. 1, 2020, we ask customers to start making their cheques out to Canada Life.

Your bank statements may start displaying Canada Life (or CL for short) for some debits and credits (Canada Vie or CV in French).  A full transition to display Canada Life for all debits and credits on your statements will take time, so you may continue to see Great-West or London Life on your statements for a while during 2020.

For online banking/electronic fund transfers, Canada Life or Canada Vie (French) is available as a payee when setting up a new bill payment. If you wish to update any payee to Canada Life from Great-West Life or London Life, you can – but it isn’t required at this time.  We’ll let you know if anything changes.

For online payments currently made to Great-West Life or London Life as payee, you can continue making your payments as you always have.  We’ll let you know if this changes. 

Please remember our full transition will take time, so although some of your payee names may automatically update to display Canada Life or CL (Canada Vie or CV in French), you may continue to see Great-West Life or London Life displayed as your payee for awhile yet.  

Yes. You can continue to access your accounts in the same places as before – with the same logins and passwords.

The Canadian open participating accounts of each of the three companies have been combined into a single Canadian open participating account (including the London Life Bermuda policies). This combined account is larger than each of the previously existing open participating accounts, providing an opportunity for greater risk diversification while reducing regulatory and participating account management expenses. This is expected to result in the distribution of the same or possibly slightly greater policyholder dividends for pre-amalgamation policies than would be the case if the Canadian open accounts were kept separate. Please remember that dividends are not guaranteed, and reflect the experiences of the participating account

For more details on what amalgamation means for the participating accounts check out the Additional questions and answers below.