2026 mid-year term rate roundup: who moved, who held

Nine months into 2026, exactly one major Canadian life insurer has publicly announced a cut to its term life rates. That's the headline, and the more interesting part is the timing: the cut arrived in a year when the bond yields that normally set term pricing were climbing, not falling. This roundup records what carriers actually announced, what they didn't, and what that means if you're shopping for term coverage now.

A note on what this is. It's a chronicle of carrier announcements, drawn from the insurers' own product pages and bulletins, dated. It is not a price comparison and it does not name a cheapest carrier — your premium depends on your age, health, coverage amount and term, and only a quote answers that. Every item below carries its date; the whole piece was verified on September 21, 2026.

Effective February 23, 2026, BMO Insurance lowered base rates on its Term 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 plans and on term riders. BMO's own announcement describes it as one of its most comprehensive updates in years, with decreases across all ages and coverage bands, and — the detail most buyers should notice — proportionately lower renewal rates as well. The carrier puts the overall effect at roughly a 5% premium reduction on average.

The renewal-rate piece matters more than it sounds. When a term ends, coverage renews at a premium based on your age at that point, and those renewal premiums are set in advance and printed in the contract. A carrier lowering renewal rates along with initial rates is improving the part of the product most people never look at until it bites. BMO framed the move as helping close Canada's protection gap. Whatever the motive, it is the only across-the-board term cut any major carrier announced this year.

For Canada Life, Sun Life, Manulife, RBC Insurance, iA Financial Group, Desjardins, Equitable Life, Empire Life, Beneva, Foresters, Wawanesa, ivari and the smaller carriers, no 2026 announcement of a term base-rate change turned up in any primary source. That's a precise statement and it's worth reading precisely: "no announcement found" is not the same as "rates unchanged." Carriers sometimes reprice through advisor bulletins that never reach the public web. What can be said is that none of them told the market they moved.

Where a last known change is on record, it's older than this year. Empire Life repriced its Solution 10 and Solution 20 effective April 24, 2025, with initial premiums cut by up to 34% and term conversion and exchange features made contractual — a significant move, but a 2025 one. Canada Life's customizable My Term product, which lets buyers pick any length from 5 to 50 years, launched in April 2021. Both still show up in 2026 articles as if they were news. They aren't.

Several carriers did announce things this year, and it's easy to misread them as term repricing. Sun Life told advisors in March that it was lowering the interest credited to some legacy permanent policies — a change to older whole life and universal life blocks, not to term premiums. iA moved its term and permanent products onto its new digital platform in April, a process change with no stated effect on rates. Canada Life's spring announcements concerned participating whole life. And in July BMO launched a digital underwriting tool that returns real-time decisions on applications up to $5 million — which changes how fast you get approved, not what you pay. None of these move the term-rate needle, and a roundup that counted them would be padding.

Term life is priced largely off long-term government bond yields, because that's where insurers invest the premiums they collect against claims decades away. Higher yields let insurers earn more on those reserves and, all else equal, push term pricing down; lower yields push it up. That's the intuition, and 2026 inverted it.

The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25% for the entire year to date — seven consecutive holds through September 2, unchanged since October 2025. Long yields told a different story: the Government of Canada 10-year yield climbed from around 3.4% in February to 3.64% in late March, its highest since mid-2024, and was near 3.95% by mid-September, the highest in roughly three years. The pressure on term pricing in 2026 was upward. That is what makes BMO's cut a competitive decision rather than a market-wide trend, and it's why waiting for a general fall in term rates has no support in this year's data.

Demand, meanwhile, is strong. LIMRA reported that Canadian individual life insurance new premium reached a record $2.3 billion in 2025, up 9% on the year, with policy counts up 4%. Term's share of that is modest — around a fifth of new premium, with whole life dominating — but it grew. Insurers cutting term rates into rising demand and rising yields are buying market share, not responding to cheaper money.

No regulation touched term pricing for consumers this year. OSFI's 2025 capital-rule updates were solvency plumbing, not something that reaches a premium. Assuris protection limits — the industry-funded backstop if an insurer fails — stayed where they were set in May 2023: a death benefit protected up to $1,000,000 or 90% of the benefit, whichever is higher. And no tax change affected individual life policies. If you bought term last year, the ground under your policy is the same.

Waiting has a measurable cost and no visible payoff. Term premiums are set by your age at purchase, so every year you wait prices you as an older applicant. There's no sourced evidence of a general 2026 decline to wait for — one carrier moved, and the underlying yields moved the other way.

A carrier's rate cut doesn't reach existing policies. New base rates apply to new applications. If you already hold a term policy, your premium is guaranteed and locked for the initial term — which cuts both ways, since it also means no one can raise it on you.

One announcement is not a ranking. That BMO cut its rates tells you BMO's rates are lower than BMO's rates were. It tells you nothing about how they compare to another carrier's for your profile. Carriers that announced nothing may still be competitive for you; carriers that announced cuts may not be. Only a quote across several insurers settles that, and it is what a licensed advisor is for.

This roundup will be refreshed if a second major carrier announces a 2026 term reprice, or if the 10-year yield settles above 4% — either would change the story. Until then, the 2026 picture is one mover, no market-wide trend, and pricing pressure pointing the other way. This article is a news summary, not a quote or individual advice; your contract and a licensed advisor govern your own situation.