Life insurance in Sarnia

CWCC works with industrial workers, families and business owners in Sarnia and Lambton 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 Sarnia different

Sarnia is an industrial city in the full sense of the term, and that shows in the shape of the protection families here already hold.

A dominant petrochemical and industrial sector. Refining, chemicals, specialised maintenance. Well-paid work, often unionised, with group plans more complete than average.

A great many trades and shift work. Incomes that depend on physical capacity, and overtime that makes a real difference to the household budget.

Industrial service contractors. Many small specialised businesses orbiting the large installations, often with no group plan.

A stable, ageing population. Full careers with a single employer, and many people who retire here.

When several plans pay at the same time

This is the central question here, and it is about the amount rather than eligibility. Most people assume the benefits add up. Very often, they do not.

The clause that changes everything

Many group disability contracts carry an all-source maximum clause. It provides that the benefit paid by the plan will be reduced by what you receive from other designated sources, so that the total does not exceed a ceiling set in the contract.

The consequence surprises people: qualifying for a public benefit can add almost nothing to your total income, because the group plan reduces its share by the same amount. The money changes source without the household seeing any of it.

Which sources are caught varies from one contract to another. Typically they include disability benefits from the public pension plan, compensation paid following a workplace injury, and sometimes other coverage held elsewhere. The list is in your booklet, and it is the first thing to look for there.

The order things happen in

Without going into amounts, which vary and change, the typical sequence runs like this: a period of employment insurance sickness benefits or short-term disability, then the move to the group plan’s long-term disability, with a waiting period between the two.

If the cause is work-related, the provincial workers’ compensation scheme comes into play instead, with its own rules. And a disability benefit under the public pension plan has its own criteria and its own timelines.

Each of these has its own conditions, delays and appeals, and none of them knows the others exist: it falls to you or your family to coordinate them, at the worst possible time to be doing it.

What individual coverage changes

An individual disability policy is a separate contract. Depending on its terms it can be designed to pay without being reduced by other sources, which puts it in a different position from the group plan.

That is not automatic and it depends entirely on the contract: some individual policies carry integration provisions too. The question to ask is precise: is this benefit reduced if I receive something else? The answer is in the contract, not the brochure.

Note as well that the tax treatment of a benefit depends among other things on who paid the premiums. That question belongs to your accountant, and it is worth asking before comparing gross amounts.

The income that is not insured

One observation that applies particularly to the trades here. Many contracts calculate the benefit on base salary, without counting overtime, shift premiums or bonuses.

A household used to living on its real income, overtime included, can therefore end up with a benefit calculated on a markedly lower base than what normally comes in. Check what the benefit is calculated on before concluding that you are covered.

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

What we do for families here

We read the group benefits booklet before discussing anything else, and we look for three things: the disability definition, the all-source maximum clause and the list of sources it catches, and the basis the benefit is calculated on.

Those three determine what you would actually receive, and they matter more than the figure printed in large type on the first page.

We send you to your accountant for the tax treatment of benefits, which depends among other things on who pays the premiums.

The first meeting

Half an hour, by video, at no cost and with nothing to sign. Bring your group benefits booklet if you have one: we will go straight to the three clauses that matter. At the end you will know what you already have, which is often the information that was missing.

Frequently asked questions