Our process

Five steps, from the first conversation to the annual review. None of them carries a fee, every meeting is held online, and you can stop at any one of them without explaining yourself.

People often ask what working with us actually looks like before they book anything. Here is the whole process, including the step where the decision is not ours to make.

The five steps

1. 01

   Thirty minutes, online, no products

   The Discovery Meeting

   We listen. You describe your situation, what you are trying to protect or build, and what you have already tried. We answer questions in plain language.

   Many people arrive having read part of this site or the book, and that makes the conversation better. It is not required, and nothing is assumed of you.

   We also confirm two things that decide whether there is a step two at all: that you live in Canada, since these are Canadian contracts and an advisor must be licensed where you live, and that you have income or assets to work with, since the strategy redirects capital rather than creating it.

   At the end we tell you whether this fits. If it does not, we say so in that meeting rather than sending you a proposal.

   No fee. Nothing is sold in this meeting, and no application is started.

2. 02

   The one piece of work we ask of you

   Your Financial DNA

   Between the first meeting and the next, you complete what the industry calls a Know Your Client record. We call it your Financial DNA: assets, liabilities, income, expenses, obligations, the pressures you are managing, and what you actually want money to do.

   This is not a sales form. A licensed advisor cannot responsibly recommend an insurance product without establishing that it suits your circumstances, and that obligation is why the step exists.

   Your information is held under our privacy policy, Quebec’s Law 25 and PIPEDA. You decide what you share, and an incomplete picture simply means a narrower recommendation.

   Suitability is a regulatory obligation, not a formality. We would rather ask more questions than fewer.

3. 03

   Scenarios, not a single pitch

   The Design Meeting

   We bring you more than one way forward, and we walk through each in plain language. Where a projection is shown, we separate what the contract guarantees from what it does not, because dividends are declared annually by the insurer and are never guaranteed.

   You ask questions. You take the time you need. We coordinate with your accountant and your legal advisor where the structure calls for it.

   If you would rather not proceed, that is a complete answer. You owe us nothing and we will not chase you.

   You sign nothing you do not fully understand. If a scenario is unclear, that is our failure to explain, not yours to follow.

4. 04

   The insurer decides, not us

   Application and underwriting

   If you choose to go ahead, we prepare and submit an application. From that point the decision belongs to the insurance company.

   Underwriting usually involves health and lifestyle questions, and may involve a medical examination or a request for records. Acceptance is not automatic. An application can be:

   • accepted as applied for
   • accepted with a rating, meaning a higher premium for the same coverage
   • accepted with an exclusion on a particular cause
   • postponed pending treatment or test results
   • declined

   A small number of guaranteed-issue products ask no health questions, but they cost more for less coverage and usually limit benefits in the first years. They are a last resort, not a shortcut.

   We tell you where the file stands at each stage, including when the news is not what you hoped.

   No outcome is promised here, by us or by anyone. Anyone who promises you approval before underwriting is not telling you the truth.

5. 05

   Where we stay with you

   After the policy is in force

   A policy is the beginning of the work, not the end of it. We review it with you annually, and we are available between reviews when something changes.

   That includes how and when to use a policy loan, how repayment affects the death benefit while the loan is outstanding, what a change in the dividend scale means for your plan, and how the policy interacts with a home purchase, a business decision, a child’s education, or retirement income.

   We coordinate with your accountant and your legal advisor as your situation changes, because the tax and estate treatment is theirs to advise on, not ours.

   CWCC is a family firm. These strategies unfold over decades, and looking after them year by year is the part of the work we care about most.

How we are paid, and what we ask

You are not charged a fee for any of the steps above. Not the discovery meeting, not the Financial DNA, not the design meeting, and not the application.

We are paid by the insurance company, as a commission, and only if a policy is issued and put in force. We are paid when you buy, and not paid when you do not.

So there is one thing we ask, and only one. If the work we have done together leads you to proceed, we hope you will place it with us. If it leads you to decide this is not for you, that is a genuinely fine outcome, and we will not treat it as a loss. We would rather you leave well informed than proceed unconvinced.

What to bring to the first meeting, item by item

Bring what you already have and nothing you would have to build: a recent pay statement or your latest notice of assessment; the most recent statement from each registered plan and each account you save into; the balance, the payment and the rate on every debt, the mortgage included; every insurance contract already in force, personal or through work, with the amount, the owner and the beneficiary; a rough figure for what leaves the household in an ordinary month; if you are incorporated, the latest financial statements and a sentence on who holds the shares; and the name of your accountant, and of your lawyer or notary.

If you bring none of it, nothing bad happens. The discovery meeting is a conversation and no document is needed to hold one. Those figures are what the record afterwards is made of, so arriving empty handed costs you a gap, not a meeting.

What to ask us, and what a worrying answer sounds like

Write your questions down before you dial in. How are you paid, and by whom. What happens to me if I stop paying in the fourth year. Which of the figures you are about to show me are contractual, and which are not. Who is the lender if I take money out against the contract, and who is owed the interest. And the one most people forget: what would make you tell me not to do this. On the first, the answer here is a commission paid by the insurer, weighted heavily to the first contract year, and no hidden advisory fees.

Four answers should worry you, here or anywhere else. A number promised before an insurer has underwritten anything. Impatience with the guaranteed columns. Any version of the claim that this suits everybody. And a reluctance to put an answer in writing. An answer that changes between meetings is worth raising out loud.

What happens between the meetings, and how long each gap runs

The gap after the discovery meeting is yours. Most households take a week or two over the record, and it is the sole piece of work asked of you. We read it before designing anything, and where a corporation, a shareholder agreement or an estate question sits underneath the file, we write to your accountant or your notary first, which can add a week by itself.

Allow an hour for the design meeting and expect to leave without signing. That gap is yours as well, and there is no reason to close it quickly: read the scenarios cold on a different day and show them to whoever you normally consult. If you go ahead, the application is its own sitting, because the questions are answered in your words. From the moment it leaves, the clock stops being ours.

Underwriting in plain words, and the step nobody controls

Underwriting has three moving parts. The questionnaire comes first: health and lifestyle questions answered in your own words, and those answers form part of the contract, so an approximation you would not want to defend later is worse for you than an inconvenient fact today. The paramedical comes second: a nurse visits your home or office for height, weight, blood pressure and a blood and urine sample, usually under an hour and normally booked within days.

The third is the attending physician’s statement, where the insurer writes to your own doctor for your file. Nobody controls this step: not you, not us, not the insurer. It moves at the speed of a medical office, and it is by far the commonest reason a file that should take three weeks takes three months. You are allowed to telephone your doctor and ask them to send it. That is not interference, and it often works.

What a rating or a decline actually means

A rating means accepted. The insurer has placed you in a class it prices differently, so the premium is higher for the same coverage. It is an actuarial classification, not a judgment on your character, and it is not always permanent. When one is applied you may ask for the reason in writing, ask that the results of any test the insurer ordered be released, usually through your own physician, and ask what evidence would support a request to have it reconsidered later.

A decline is one insurer’s decision on one application on one day. The options are to ask what the file would need to be reconsidered, to apply elsewhere knowing that a decline is recorded in an industry information exchange and travels with you, to look at a smaller amount or a different kind of coverage, or to wait until the reason has changed.

The day the contract arrives, and the clause to find first

Delivery is itself a step: many contracts require your signature on a delivery receipt and a statement that your health has not changed since you applied, sometimes with the first premium. Read it that day, in order. The schedule page first: owner, life insured, beneficiary, amount, premium and how long it is payable. Then the dividend option recorded, a dividend being declared annually at the insurer’s discretion and never guaranteed. Then any rating or exclusion. Then the clause that gives you a window to change your mind.

That window is not set by your province. Outside Quebec it is a term the insurer writes into the contract, and in Quebec two narrow statutory routes exist alongside it. So the useful instruction is not the name of a law: find the clause in your own contract, read how many days it gives you, and read when the count begins, which is frequently delivery rather than signature. Put that date in your calendar before you file anything.

The first statement, and the review that follows it

Around the contract anniversary a statement arrives. Check five lines against what you were shown: that the premium collected matches the contract; that the dividend option printed is the one you chose; that any additional amount you paid went where you intended rather than into the base premium; the cash value and the death benefit at that date; and any loan balance with the interest accrued on it. If a figure surprises you, do not decide it is wrong and do not decide it is fine. Photograph the page, mark the line and send it.

The review runs in one direction, your life first and the contract second. Bring the statement, anything that changed in the household or the business, the current beneficiary designation, which is the document most often left out of date after a marriage, a separation or a birth, and the questions you wrote down between reviews. Leaving with nothing to change is a normal outcome, and a good one.

Changing your mind: reducing, pausing, surrendering

Contracts can be changed, at a price that differs with each route. Reducing means lowering the coverage, or lowering what you pay above the base premium: often available, sometimes permanent, and putting it back later can require fresh underwriting, while a smaller contract builds smaller values. Pausing is the route people ask for most and understand least: some contracts allow accumulated value to carry the premium for a time, which is not free, because value spent that way stops working, and doing it for years hollows the contract out.

Stopping altogether has two shapes. A reduced paid up arrangement keeps a smaller permanent amount with no further premium. A surrender ends the contract for its cash surrender value, which in the early years is normally less than was paid in, and the portion above the adjusted cost basis may be taxable in the year it happens, which is a conversation for your accountant.

What we will not do, and who this is not for

We will not recommend a contract before the record exists and the meeting has happened. We will not take an application from someone living where we are not licensed. We will not design a premium a household cannot carry for decades rather than years. We will not show illustrated values without the guaranteed columns beside them. We will not tell you approval is coming before an insurer has decided. And we do not give tax, legal or accounting advice, ever.

It follows that this does not suit everybody. If you carry expensive consumer debt, clear it first. If you have no accessible reserve of cash, build that first. If your income could not carry the premium through a bad year, the arrangement is a liability rather than an asset. If you need the same money back within a few years, this is the wrong place for it. And if you are hoping to be persuaded rather than convinced, say so, and we will agree with you.

How a complaint is made, and where it goes next

Tell us first, in writing. A dated note saying what happened, what was said and what you want done about it is worth more than a call nobody recorded. Where the complaint concerns the contract rather than the advice, the insurer has its own complaints process and a person who answers for it, identified in the material delivered with your contract. Ask us for a copy of anything held in your file. It is your file.

If neither answer satisfies you, the complaint goes to the regulator that licenses insurance representatives in the province where you live. That step runs on documents rather than impressions, so keep every illustration, every signed page and every email, and note the dates. You do not need our agreement to complain, and you will never be asked to withdraw one.

Questions people ask

Frequently asked questions