Life insurance in Brossard

CWCC works with Brossard and South Shore families, newcomers settled in Quebec and business owners on life insurance, living benefits, succession planning and capital strategy: entirely online. The firm is registered with the Autorité des marchés financiers under number 602293, where Jose Salloum practises as a Financial Security Advisor.

What makes Brossard different

Brossard has one of the highest proportions of people born outside Canada among Quebec cities, and that reality shows up in nearly every file we are asked to look at here. The questions are not only about what will happen in Quebec.

Families who arrived as adults. A career begun elsewhere, sometimes property kept in the country of origin, and grandparents who do not live on the same continent as their grandchildren.

A commuting population. Many cross into Montreal each day, and the growth of public transit has brought the South Shore closer to downtown rather than the other way round.

A great many self-employed people and small businesses. Retail, restaurants, professional services, real estate. Real incomes, and often no group plan behind them.

A high rate of home ownership. A mortgage taken on relatively later in life, which pushes the payoff date into an age where insurance costs more.

What the date of your arrival fixed, without anyone telling you

This is the central question here, and it is also the one almost no family has heard asked at the moment it would have been useful.

The deemed acquisition

The Income Tax Act generally provides that a person becoming resident in Canada is deemed to have acquired most of their property at fair market value at that moment. Certain categories of property are excluded from the rule.

In practice this means the gain accrued before your arrival is generally not taxable in Canada. That is good news, on one condition: you have to be able to establish what each asset was worth on the day you arrived. A house abroad, a portfolio, shares in a family business: without a valuation or a contemporaneous document, the demonstration becomes difficult years later, and it is the taxpayer who owes it.

Almost nobody does this work on arrival, because one arrives with more pressing priorities. It is a file to build with a tax specialist, not with us; we raise it because the question never asks itself.

Insurability does not improve

There is a second element that time does not make better. Your insurability is better today than it will ever be again: age advances, and health questions tend to multiply rather than disappear.

A family who arrived at thirty-five and waits to feel “settled” before thinking about it often applies ten years later, at a higher age and sometimes with a fuller medical history. It is also worth knowing that some insurers require a minimum period of residency, or a particular status, before issuing: better checked early than discovered at the application.

An estate spread across two countries

A Canadian will settles what is in Canada. It does not necessarily settle what is elsewhere, and the rules of the country where the asset sits often take priority, including forced-heirship rules that do not exist here.

Three situations come up constantly: a property kept in the country of origin, bank accounts never closed, and elderly parents who receive money from you. Each raises a distinct question, and none of them is resolved by a will drafted here.

There is also a reporting obligation: holding foreign property above a threshold set out in law must be reported annually to the Canada Revenue Agency, and the penalties for omission are real. The threshold, the forms and the exceptions belong to your tax specialist.

What insurance contributes here is simple: an amount paid quickly, in Canadian dollars, to a person you named, without depending on the settlement of an estate that spans two jurisdictions and can take years.

The Quebec framework, for those arriving from elsewhere

Quebec follows the Civil Code, not the common law. Two features regularly surprise families arriving from another country or another province.

The first is that a common-law partner does not inherit without a will, however long the relationship has lasted and even where there are children. The second is that a notarial will does not require probate, while a holograph will or one made before witnesses does: that adds delay at the moment a family has least of it.

A beneficiary designation on a policy operates independently of the will and passes the death benefit outside the estate.

What we do for families here

Where a family arrived from another country, we start with three questions: the year of arrival, what was kept there, and who still depends on you financially, here and elsewhere. The answers direct everything else.

Then come the protections already in place, the mortgage insurance taken out with the lender, the will if there is one, and the structure of the business if there is one.

We coordinate with your accountant, your notary and, where foreign property is involved, with a tax specialist who knows that ground. We do not go there in their place.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. If you know the year you became resident in Canada, bring it: that date organises almost everything else. At the end you will know whether this belongs in your situation, and if the answer is no, you will hear it during the meeting.

Frequently asked questions