Our processes and service standards

These service standards apply to the processing of life and critical illness applications.

Service standards
Application processing (making it visible on the Activity centre) Up to 1 business day after receiving a receipt of the application from the Independent Insurance New Business department
Initial underwriting review of new applications Up to 3 business days after appearing on the Activity centre
Matching of underwriting requirement(s) with the Client file (e.g. labs, APS etc.) Up to 1 business day after the requirement(s) appear in our Document Centre

Reviewing requirements and making the underwriting decision

Up to 5 business days after receiving the final underwriting requirements

Policy Issue

 Up to 2 business days after the underwriting decision and/or receipt of the final issue requirement(s) in the New Business department

Commission generation

 Up to 2 business days after receipt of the final settle requirement(s) in the New Business department

Commission generation

 Commissions are generated every Wednesday for business settled by 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday (the previous day). For commissions to be paid on time, all delivery requirements must be received within our New Business department before Friday at 4:00 p.m. ET.

*Our target is to be within 90% of these published service standards.

New business procedures

New business policy documents (i.e. the policy, policy delivery requirements) will be sent to the attention of the selling advisor or their back office. Each policy will have an invoice and a policy delivery receipt. Policy delivery requirements, once completed, are to be sent by you or your back office to the Document and Distribution Centre at the Sun Life Financial Waterloo office.

New business and underwriting communications

Status updates are available through your Activity Centre where you can access pending and in-force business client information.

Standard, declines and substandard underwriting decisions

Underwriting decisions for standard, declines and substandard cases will be sent to your Activity Centre.

Underwriters will provide the additional rating needed to generate illustrations for SunUniversalLife, Sun Limited Pay Life, SunTerm, and Sun CII coverage.

Policy dating

The policy date will be the underwriting approval date or the retained age date if requested by the advisor.

Policy delivery requirements

Commission is paid only after a policy is settled. A policy is settled when the listed delivery requirements are received and approved by the New Business Department and could include the following items:

  • premium/payment
  • client's banking information (if applicable)
  • signed illustration (for SunUniversalLife and Sun Limited Pay Life and Sun Participating Life)
  • Policy delivery receipt (4490-E)

If the application is POD, payment of the premium will establish the policy delivery date. The 10-day free-look period starts from the date the owner receives the policy.

If there are outstanding requirements, policy delivery is assumed when the initial premium payment and the remaining delivery requirements are received.

Policy delivery requirements, once completed, are to be sent by you or your back office to the Document and Distribution Centre at the Sun Life Financial Waterloo office.

Policy amendments

You will be asked to notify the customer of any application amendments when the policy is not issued as applied for. Some amendments require the client's signature.

Delivery standard

At issue, each policy will be couriered to you or your back office with an invoice and a policy delivery receipt, indicating the necessary documents required to complete the policy delivery process. These requirements must be received by Sun Life Financial by the date specified on the New Business requirements screen. Our standard delivery period is 6 weeks (42 days).

The 90-day rule (cases with temporary insurance) 

Files will be kept active for 90 days from the date the application is signed by the client to the date of settling the policy. Applications with outstanding requirements will be closed at day 90. Large cases may take longer to underwrite and will be considered on an individual basis to see if the file can remain open. The advisor will receive notification of any extension through the Activity Centre.