Life insurance in Kingston

CWCC works with public servants, university and hospital staff, retirees and business owners in Kingston 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 Kingston different

Kingston has an employment composition found nowhere else in Ontario at this scale: an unusual share of the population works for a public employer, with everything that implies.

Universities and teaching hospitals. Teaching, research and care, with defined benefit pension plans and careers measured in decades.

A strong federal and provincial presence. Correctional services, military training, public administration. Solid plans, and retirements predictable to the year.

Retirees who stay. Many people finish their careers here and remain, which gives the city a population older than the provincial average.

A service economy around it. Heritage tourism, retail, construction. A great many self-employed people with no plan behind them at all.

What happens to your group coverage on the day you retire

This is the central question here, and it is also the one most people have never asked, because nothing in their working life invites them to.

The most common assumption

Someone who has worked thirty years for the same employer has had group life insurance throughout. They have grown used to the idea of being covered, and they reasonably assume that coverage will come with them.

In most cases it does not. Group life insurance is usually a multiple of salary, and it ends or drops to a token amount at retirement. Where retiree coverage exists, it is generally far below what applied during working life, and nothing prevents an employer from changing it later.

Two things are worth checking in your booklet rather than assuming: the exact amount that remains after retirement, and the conversion window allowing group coverage to be converted to individual coverage without evidence of health. That window is short and it runs from the end of coverage.

The survivor pension election

On the same day a second decision arrives, and that one is generally irrevocable.

The choice

A defined benefit plan asks you, at retirement, what share of the pension should continue to your spouse after your death. The higher the survivor share, the lower the pension paid during your lifetime. It is a trade between income today and protection for your spouse later.

Ontario law provides a minimum level of spousal protection, which can only be waived in the manner the law sets out. It is never simply a box to tick.

The strategy someone will show you

There is a known approach: take a higher pension during your lifetime and buy life insurance to protect your spouse. It is legitimate and it suits some situations.

It rests, however, on conditions that deserve to be stated before the advantage: the retiree has to be insurable at the moment of the choice, the premium has to be sustainable across the whole of retirement rather than the first few years, and the coverage has to be maintained until death. A policy that lapses twenty years after an irrevocable waiver leaves the spouse with no pension and no capital.

That is why we ask for the calculation to be done with your accountant, on your figures, before any proposal. Where the comparison does not hold, we will say so: the ordinary survivor pension is often the right answer.

What Ontario adds

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

For a long-retired person one check is overdue: the beneficiary designations recorded on the plan, on registered accounts and on any policy sometimes date from the day of hiring. They override the will, whatever the date of that will.

What we do for families here

As retirement approaches we ask for two documents: the group benefits booklet and the statement or pension option provided by the plan. Those two hold nearly everything that matters, and almost nobody has read them in full.

We then look at what remains after retirement, the conversion window, the designations in force, and what the spouse would need if the first death came in five years rather than in twenty-five.

We coordinate with your accountant, and for the pension election we insist that they are in the conversation.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. If your retirement is approaching, bring the benefits booklet: we will go straight to the amount that remains and the conversion window. 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