Life insurance in Pickering

CWCC works with families, energy sector workers, commuters and business owners in Pickering and Durham Region 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 Pickering different

Pickering combines a long-established residential core with recent growth, which gives it a population moving at two speeds.

A substantial energy sector. Specialised jobs, long careers and group plans among the most complete in the region.

Households settled for decades. Many hold contracts bought twenty or thirty years ago that they no longer remember well.

A commuting population. Trips west and long days.

New neighbourhoods still growing. Young families buying their first protection at the same time as their first house.

Reading the statement that arrives once a year

This is the central question here, and it concerns a document almost everybody files without opening.

That statement is nonetheless the only regular report you will receive on a contract that may run forty years. It is worth a quarter of an hour once a year, and it can be read without any particular training.

What the figures mean

• The death benefit. The amount that would be paid today. Check whether it has changed since the previous statement, up or down, and find out why if it has.
• The surrender value. What you would receive by ending the contract now. It is not the same thing as the death benefit and it can differ from the accumulated value shown elsewhere on the page.
• The participation credited this year, in a participating contract, and how it was applied according to the option you chose.
• Any outstanding policy loan, with the interest it has accrued.
• The premium status. What is owed, when, and whether a payment has been missed.

The two traps worth knowing

The first is an outstanding loan. An amount borrowed against the policy and not repaid, together with the interest it has produced, reduces what will actually be paid at death. The statement shows it, and many families learn of it only at the claim.

The second is the surrender value in the early years. In most permanent contracts it stays below the total of premiums paid for a number of years. That is not a fault: it is how these contracts are built. But somebody who comes across the figure without that explanation believes they have been cheated, and nobody had told them.

What the statement will not tell you

A statement describes the contract. It does not describe your life, and that is where its limit is.

It will never tell you whether your beneficiary designation still matches your intentions, nor whether the amount still matches your need. Those two checks are the more important of the lot, and no document arriving in the post can do them for you.

What a real review consists of

Candour is owed about a widespread habit in this business: an annual call whose conclusion is always that something should be added is not a review, it is a sales call under another name.

A review that deserves the name covers four things and often ends with “nothing to change”: the beneficiary designation and the contingent beneficiary, the amount measured against the current need, the state of premiums and of any loan, and what has happened since last time.

A review can perfectly well conclude that protection which has become too large should be reduced. If that has never once been put to you across several years, that is information about the nature of the meetings you have been having.

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.

For a long career with one employer, one check is overdue: the designation recorded on the group plan and the pension plan sometimes dates from the day of hiring, and it overrides the will.

What we do for families here

Bring your statements from the last two years and we will read them with you, line by line, until you can read them yourself next year. That is the point of the exercise.

We check the four elements of a review, including where the conclusion is that there is nothing to change.

We send you to your accountant for any tax question tied to a loan or a surrender, because those transactions can carry tax consequences.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. The most recent statement is enough to start, and you do not have to be a client to have it explained. At the end you will be able to read your own, which is useful even if we never speak again.

Frequently asked questions