Life insurance in Burlington

CWCC works with established families, long-standing policyholders and business owners in Burlington on life insurance, living benefits, succession planning and capital strategy: entirely online. The firm is registered with Quebec’s AMF under number 602293 and is licensed to place insurance in Ontario, where Jose Salloum is a licensed life insurance agent with FSRA.

A point about titles

In Ontario the titles “Financial Planner” and “Financial Advisor” are protected under the Financial Professionals Title Protection Act. We do not use them. Jose Salloum is a licensed life insurance agent here: that is what his FSRA licence permits.

What makes Burlington different

Burlington is an established city rather than a growing one, and it shows in the files we are asked to look at: they are rarely about starting from nothing.

Households settled a long time. Houses owned for twenty or thirty years, mortgages paid or nearly so, and wealth already built.

A great many older policies. Bought in the nineties or the two thousands, from an advisor who has since retired, and rarely read since.

Professionals and executives. High incomes, group plans, and immediate proximity to the Hamilton and Toronto markets.

A population older than the regional average. Many people worked here their whole lives and stay once retirement comes.

When you are offered a replacement for your policy

This is the central question here, because Burlington holds a great many older contracts, and an older contract attracts proposals to replace it.

Why this transaction deserves your attention

Replacing a policy means cancelling an existing one to buy a new one. Sometimes that is entirely justified. It is also the transaction where the advisor’s interest and the client’s diverge most sharply, because a new policy generates a new first-year commission.

We say that knowing we are paid the same way as everyone else in this business. That is precisely why the question should be put openly rather than left unspoken.

The five things that restart at zero

• The incontestability period. After a set number of years an insurer generally can no longer contest a contract for a misstatement, absent fraud. A new policy restarts that clock. Your old policy may have passed that point long ago.
• The suicide clause. It too carries an initial period, and it begins again with the new contract.
• Underwriting. The new policy is assessed on your age and health today, not those of twenty years ago.
• Accumulated value. On a permanent policy, cancelling can trigger surrender charges and tax consequences depending on the contract’s adjusted cost basis. Your accountant has to weigh in before, not after.
• The rights written into the contract. Conversion privilege, guaranteed insurability, various options: those in the old policy disappear with it, and those in the new one are not necessarily equivalent.

The disclosure you are owed

Provincial regulation requires a representative proposing a replacement to provide written disclosure comparing the existing contract with the proposed one, and to give it to you before the decision is made.

Ask for it, read it, and keep a copy. If it has not been given to you, the conversation should stop there. And the absolute rule applies here more than anywhere: never cancel the old policy until the new one has been issued, paid and put in force.

When a replacement is justified

Sometimes it is: a need that has changed completely, a contract whose insurer no longer services it, an ownership structure made unsuitable by an incorporation or a divorce. In those cases the written comparison will show it on its own. If it does not show it, that is the answer.

Reading the statement you receive each year

Most owners of permanent policies receive an annual statement and file it unopened. Four lines are worth a glance, and the exercise takes two minutes.

The current death benefit, which is not always what you think, particularly if participations have been added or a loan is running. The cash surrender value, which is a different figure. Any loan outstanding, with the interest accrued, because it reduces what will be paid. And the beneficiary recorded, which sometimes dates from the day the policy was bought.

If any of those four lines surprises you, that is the signal to call somebody. We read statements without selling anything, and it happens regularly.

What Ontario adds

Estate Administration Tax is calculated on the value of assets passing through the estate. A death benefit paid to a named beneficiary does not pass through it.

On an older contract, the beneficiary designation overrides the will whatever the date of that will. A will redrawn after a divorce does not correct a designation left untouched on a policy from 1998.

What we do for families here

Where an existing policy is involved, we start by reading it in full, riders included, before offering any opinion at all. A contract from the nineties sometimes carries guarantees that are no longer sold today.

If a replacement looks justified, we produce the written comparison and give you time to read it. If it does not, we advise you to keep what you have, and the meeting ends that way.

We coordinate with your accountant before any cancellation of a permanent policy, because of the possible tax consequences.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. If you already hold a policy, bring the contract and the latest statement: we will read them together. At the end you will know what you already own, which is often the only thing that was missing.

Frequently asked questions