Empire Life Brand Guidelines: A 1923 Toronto Start, Kingston Since 1936 & E-L Financial

A Toronto insurer that settled in Kingston.

Empire Life began in Toronto. English Wikipedia says the company was incorporated in 1923 and founded that year by Milton Palmer Langstaff, and the company dates its anniversary to 11 January: in a December 2023 release it said its 100th anniversary fell on January 11, 2023. Its legal name is The Empire Life Insurance Company, and it trades in French as Empire Vie.

Its early growth came through combinations with other insurers. English Wikipedia lists a 1929 merger with the Commonwealth Life insurance company, the purchase in 1934 of the insurance portfolio of the Canadian Order of Odd Fellows, and a 1936 merger with the Mutual Relief Life Insurance Company. After that last merger the head office moved from Toronto to Kingston, Ontario, where it has stayed. “Kingston has been home to our head office since 1936 and it’s where we plan to stay,” the company’s chief executive said in November 2023.

The Kingston building became part of the company’s public face. The Ottawa Business Journal reported in March 2023 that Empire Life, then marking 100 years, was moving out of the heritage building and office complex in downtown Kingston that had been its home base since 1936, a 1.7-acre site on King Street East. The company told the paper that about 650 employees had once worked there from Monday to Friday, against 120 to 150 on its busiest days in 2023, as staff moved to hybrid work, and that its next office would be in the Kingston area. In November 2023 the company announced an agreement to sell the property to a local developer and said it would keep using the premises for a period while it looked for office space to lease in Kingston.

A family-controlled holding company.

Ownership has been steady for decades. Empire Life says three generations of the Jackman family have been involved with the company since 1956 and have controlled its parent, E-L Financial Corporation Limited, since that company’s incorporation in 1969; English Wikipedia dates E-L Financial’s purchase of 94% of Empire Life’s shares to 1968. Empire Life says E-L Financial raised its holding to 98.3% in 2015, and E-L Financial, whose shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange, gives its interest as 99.5% as at December 31, 2024. E-L Financial describes itself as an investment and insurance holding company with two operating segments: its own investment arm, E-L Corporate, and Empire Life.

The name in the market changed more often than the owner. English Wikipedia says that in 1987 E-L Financial bought The Montreal Life Insurance Company and the life operations of The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company, and that the group used the marketing name Empire Financial Group from 1987 to 2005. On December 31, 1997 Empire Life bought Colonia Life Insurance Company, renamed it Concordia Life a year later, and on January 1, 2002 the two were amalgamated as one company, The Empire Life Insurance Company, or L’Empire, Compagnie d’Assurance-Vie. In 2006 the marketing name went back to Empire Life. The same source lists blocks of policies taken on from other insurers between 1992 and 2000, and the launch in 2011 of an investment-management subsidiary, Empire Life Investments Inc.

The product range is set out on the company’s own pages under three headings: insurance, investments and group benefits. They cover term, permanent and participating life cover; health cover; segregated funds, including guaranteed investment funds and the Class Plus 3.0 product; annuities; and group life, health and dental plans for employers. English Wikipedia says these products are sold through independent distribution partners, including financial advisors, management general agents, national account firms and employee benefit producers. The company says it is a member of Assuris, the not-for-profit organisation for Canadian life insurance policyholders.

How Canadian insurers present themselves.

Canadian insurers work in two official languages, and their names often show it. Canada Life is Canada Vie in French, and Great-West Life had a French name of its own before it was folded into Canada Life in 2020. Companies based in Quebec, such as Desjardins, lead with French, while national insurers run their websites, forms and statements in both languages, so a wordmark has to read well in English and in French.

Colour does much of the work. Across the sector, wordmarks and symbols come in reds, blues, yellows and greens: Manulife and Desjardins both use green, Sun Life’s mark is built around a sun, and the weather beacon on Canada Life’s Toronto building signals in green, orange and white. Maple leaves and northern landscapes are a familiar visual shorthand for the country, and they sit easily beside those colours.

The names themselves have shifted. Sun Life and Mutual Life were mutual companies, owned by their policyholders, until they demutualised in 1999 and 2000 and became listed companies, Mutual Life under the new name Clarica; later mergers folded older names such as Great-West Life, London Life and Clarica into bigger brands. Much of the selling still happens through advisor networks and employers, and the websites are organised by need: pages on life, health, home, auto and group cover, and on investment and retirement products.

Insurers also publish a great deal about themselves, from annual reports to sustainability reports and public accountability statements, and those documents carry the brand as much as any advertisement. This guide sets out what can be checked about each insurer: who founded it, who owns it, how its name has changed, and what rests only on the company’s own word.

Numbers, plain claims and a Kingston address.

On its own pages Empire Life presents itself through figures and plain statements. It describes itself as one of the top 10 Canadian life insurance companies, based on total assets in filings with the federal regulator, OSFI, as at December 31, 2025, and lists integrity, sound financial and fund management, personalised service and its relationships with distribution partners as what it is known for. Its stated mission is to provide expertise and solutions “to help Canadians navigate life with confidence.” The website runs in English and French, with separate sections for advisors, for group plan members and for plan administrators.

The company says it is based in Kingston with offices from coast to coast. Its community work is part of the same voice: for its centennial year it ran an employee-nominated grant programme that gave donations to ten registered charities across Canada, it said in December 2023.

For a design guide, Empire Life shows how one steady name, long-term family control and a Kingston head office can carry a national insurer. Compare Canada Life, another Canadian life insurer, and Manulife. For this guide we use a deep navy, a slate blue and warm stone tones with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Empire Life’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.