Financial services in Surrey

CWCC works with Surrey families, farm business owners, multigenerational households and incorporated professionals 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 British Columbia, where Jose Salloum is a licensed life insurance agent with the Insurance Council of British Columbia.

A point about titles

In British Columbia, Jose Salloum is a licensed life insurance agent with the Insurance Council of British Columbia. The title Financial Security Advisor that appears elsewhere on this site is the Quebec title issued by the AMF; it does not apply here.

What makes Surrey different

Surrey is not a Vancouver suburb. It is British Columbia’s second-largest city, with close to 734,000 residents, a younger population than the provincial average, and an economic and demographic structure entirely its own.

It is home to one of Canada’s largest South Asian communities. Nearly four in ten Surrey residents identify as South Asian, and Punjabi is the most commonly spoken language at home after English — ahead of Mandarin, Hindi and Tagalog combined. That means extended families, businesses passed across generations, and financial and family ties that often cross the ocean.

A significant share of the land remains agricultural. Nearly a third of Surrey sits within the province’s Agricultural Land Reserve, with close to 500 active farms — berries, greenhouse crops, livestock, vegetables. A farm is not just a property: it is a business, often family-run, with succession rules and a land value that bear no resemblance to a suburban home.

The population is markedly younger than Vancouver’s. The median age in Surrey is roughly 38, and nearly one in six residents is under 14. This is a city of young families, recent purchases, and financial decisions made for the next thirty years rather than an approaching retirement.

The family business and the farm

This is Surrey’s most distinctive profile, and it combines two realities generic planning rarely treats together: the business passed across generations, and the particular character of a farm asset.

The farm as a business, not just land

An operation within the Agricultural Land Reserve carries significant land value, but its use is restricted: it generally cannot be converted to non-agricultural use. At the operator’s death, deemed disposition can trigger a substantial capital gain on land that, legally, cannot simply be sold to the highest bidder to cover the tax without changing its designation. Particular federal rules exist for the intergenerational transfer of qualified farm property, but their application is technical and belongs to a specialized accountant and a lawyer.

The multigenerational family business

Whether it is a farm, a retail business or a services company, passing on a family business in Surrey often follows a similar pattern: founding parents, one or more children who have worked in the business for years, and other children who took a different path. Succession and inheritance then become the same question, and the absence of a written plan guarantees conflict when expectations diverge.

A shareholders’ agreement or succession arrangement, funded by insurance, allows children who do not inherit the business to be treated fairly without forcing its sale or dismantling.

Extended family and overseas ties

As in several diverse suburban cities, multigenerational households are common in Surrey: parents, adult children and sometimes grandparents under one roof, with shared property title whose estate consequences are rarely understood in advance.

Alongside this sits a reality particular to a population nearly half of which was born outside Canada: financial support sent to parents who stayed in India or elsewhere, assets held in more than one country, and sometimes a will drafted before immigration whose validity in British Columbia has never been checked.

We cannot resolve these questions on a web page — they often belong to private international law and a lawyer — but we raise them because they are frequent here and rarely addressed elsewhere.

British Columbia succession law

Probate fees

British Columbia charges probate fees on the gross value of property passing into the hands of the personal representative. Under the Probate Fee Act: no fee on the first $25,000, $6 per $1,000 between $25,000 and $50,000, then $14 per $1,000 above, plus a $200 filing fee for most estates over $25,000. On a family farm, whose land value can be high even when cash is scarce, these fees add to an already substantial tax bill.

Wills variation

The Wills, Estates and Succession Act (WESA) allows a spouse and children — including adult children — to ask the Supreme Court to vary a will that fails to make adequate provision for them. This is unique in Canada, and it takes on particular weight in a family business: a will leaving the farm or business to the child who worked in it, to the exclusion of others, can be challenged by those who feel unfairly treated — even where the testator’s intent was clear.

How this applies to your situation belongs entirely to a British Columbia lawyer, ideally consulted while the succession plan is still being built, not after.

Beneficiary designations

As in Ontario and unlike Quebec, British Columbia allows registered accounts to carry a beneficiary designation. Insurance contracts allow it too, and proceeds paid to a named beneficiary generally escape both probate fees and a wills variation claim against estate assets.

Our seven service areas, seen from Surrey

Life insurance

Term, permanent, participating whole life. For a family business or a farm, permanent answers a precise question: how to treat fairly the children who do not inherit the principal asset.

Living benefits

Critical illness, disability, long-term care. For a farm operator or small-business owner there is often no group plan at all: protection has to be put in place deliberately.

Group insurance

For businesses that employ staff, a recruiting tool. For the member, coverage that ends with the job.

Wealth creation

RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, RESP. In a city of young families, the RESP and the FHSA deserve attention from the earliest years.

Investment options

Segregated funds, mutual funds, ETFs, GICs. Education, and segregated fund contracts placed under our insurance licence — which, in British Columbia, permit a beneficiary designation. For securities held through a dealer: a CIRO-registered representative, which CWCC is not.

Succession planning

Will, personal representative, designations, probate fees, and the particular exposure to a wills variation claim when a family asset passes to a single child.

Financial sovereignty

The layer that connects the other six. See below.

The business owner and the incorporated professional

Beyond agriculture, Surrey holds a dense fabric of small businesses — retail, construction, transport, professional services — along with incorporated professionals tied to the health and education networks.

The pattern is constant: the corporation accumulates cash because taking it out costs tax immediately. Passive income then reduces access to the small business deduction beyond a threshold. At death, the deemed disposition of the shares can trigger a substantial capital gain.

The Capital Dividend Account enters here: where a corporation owns and is beneficiary of a policy, the death benefit generally credits the CDA by the excess of the proceeds over the adjusted cost basis, and that balance can be paid to shareholders as a capital dividend, generally free of tax subject to the rules in force. It is a mechanism in the Income Tax Act, and it requires your accountant, your lawyer and us.

The Infinite Financial Sovereignty™ strategy in Surrey

The strategy we call Infinite Financial Sovereignty™ rests on the approach widely known as The Infinite Banking Concept®, originated by R. Nelson Nash. In any financing arrangement, someone supplies the capital and someone owns the structure it moves through.

The strategy uses a participating whole life insurance policy issued by a Canadian mutual insurer as the place capital accumulates on a tax-deferred basis, accessed through a policy loan rather than by applying to an outside lender.

Three clarifications, non-negotiable: a policy loan is a genuine loan issued by the insurer, it accrues interest, and it reduces the death benefit while outstanding. Dividends are never guaranteed. And this is not a bank: a policy is an insurance contract governed by provincial insurance legislation, it is not a deposit account, and protection comes from Assuris rather than CDIC.

Why Surrey? Because a family whose wealth is largely locked inside a farm or a business rarely has liquidity accessible elsewhere. A capital structure held alongside offers a source of financing that does not require pledging the principal asset as collateral with an outside lender.

The book Infinite Financial Sovereignty™, Simplified sets out the full mechanics, including an entire chapter on where the strategy does not fit.

How this approach compares

An honest comparison does not declare a winner.

This table claims no superiority. A participating policy is an insurance contract; comparing it to the market as though it were a fund would be a category error.

Who this is for in Surrey

• Farm families. Transferring an operation, federal qualified farm property rules, equalization among children.
• Family business owners. Succession, shareholders’ agreements, exposure to a wills variation claim.
• Multigenerational households. Shared title, cross-dependency.
• Families with overseas ties. Support sent abroad, a will made before immigration.
• Young families. Protection, RESP, FHSA, and decisions made for the next thirty years.
• Incorporated professionals. Cash in the corporation, passive income, the Capital Dividend Account.

And who it is not for: without an emergency fund, carrying high-interest debt, or with uncertain cash flow, those things come first.

What a first meeting covers

Thirty minutes, online, no products and no obligation.

How a meeting works

All of our meetings are held online, by video. The firm’s office is in Quebec, and no Surrey client needs to travel there. Several members of the same family or business can join the same meeting.

Check us out independently

No form in this section, nothing to book. Before trusting anyone with money the right instinct is to verify — and nothing here should discourage it.

Frequently asked questions — Surrey