Underwriting update: Improving our foreign travel guidelines

We’ve made a change to our insurance application based on a recent review of our travel and residency questions and to better align with evolving industry standards.

Our Underwriting and Claims Risk Management (UCRM) team actively reviews our underwriting manual and guidelines. These reviews help ensure that we’re making the best decisions for Clients. The team considers information from our market experience, not proceeded with applications (NPWs), declines and reinsurers.  

Updating travel questions within Sun eApp 

As of May 25, we removed the travel and residency question that asks if Clients have been ‘outside of Canada in the past 12 months’ from our electronic application. This means if the Client answers “no” to whether they have ‘future planned travel’, their application will require no further questions related to travel.

If a Client answers “yes” to travel or residency in the next 12 months, and they’re going to a country that’s identified as a higher risk according to our guidelines, there is no change to the current process. The Client will be asked an additional question that will require them to provide details about their past travel.  

We may still consider past travel as part of our assessment if any of the following apply:

• The Client has a concerning travel pattern 
• The Client declared past travel to a higher risk country on a previous application 
• Information is found through an MIB search  

Paper applications 

It will take time to update the paper application. In the meantime, underwriters aren’t required to follow up or amend for past travel if the information isn’t provided on the application. However, if we’re aware of past travel to a higher risk country and the Client intends to travel in the next 12 months, the underwriter will take that into consideration.

Questions?

This change is another step forward to make insurance applications easier and faster. If you have questions about this update, please connect with our Sun Life Select team. We’re here to help.