What an AMF Firm Registration Means, and How to Verify One

There is a number in the footer of every page on this site. It reads AMF firm registration 602293, and for most readers it is decoration: a string of digits that looks official and means nothing in particular. It is worth more than that, but only to a reader who knows what it stands for, what it does not stand for, and how to look it up without asking the firm that printed it. A number recited by the person you are checking is not verification. A number you find yourself, in a public register kept by the regulator, in an entry that names the sectors and shows any restriction, is. This article explains what a registration with the Autorité des marchés financiers actually covers, what stands behind it when something goes wrong, where the disciplinary record lives, and how to run the search yourself in about a minute. Everything below was read on the Autorité’s own site and on LégisQuebec on 8 September 2026.

What the Autorité Regulates, and What It Does Not

The Autorité des marchés financiers describes itself as the body mandated by the Government of Quebec to regulate the province’s financial markets and to assist consumers of financial products and services, under the Act respecting the regulation of the financial sector. It supervises insurance, securities, derivatives, deposit institutions other than those under federal charter, and the distribution of financial products and services. That last category is the one that covers advice about a life insurance contract, and it is governed by its own statute, the Act respecting the distribution of financial products and services.

What sits outside is as instructive as what sits inside. Federally chartered deposit takers answer to federal supervisors rather than to the Autorité. Tax questions belong to Revenu Québec and to the Canada Revenue Agency. Succession and the drafting of a will belong to a notary or a lawyer and to the Civil Code of Quebec. A complaint about the amount of a claim is a contractual dispute that ends, if it ends nowhere else, in a court.

The distinction that trips people most often is the one between insurance and securities. They are separate regulatory worlds with separate registrations, separate compensation schemes and separate complaint routes. A firm registered to distribute insurance is not thereby authorised to advise on securities, and the compliance page on this site says so about this firm in plain words. Anyone comparing an insurance solution with a securities one should read how to choose an investment advisor alongside it.

A Firm Registration and an Individual Certificate Are Not the Same Thing

Two separate authorisations have to exist before advice about a life insurance contract is lawfully given in Quebec, and they are issued under different sections of the same Act. Section 71 provides that no person may act as or purport to be a firm without being registered with the Authority. Section 12 provides that no person may act as or purport to be a representative without holding the appropriate certificate issued by the Authority. The firm is registered. The individual is certified. Neither substitutes for the other.

The two instruments behave differently over time, and the difference is the most practical thing in this article. The Autorité states that a registration has no expiry date and is valid as long as it has not been cancelled, suspended or made subject to certain restrictions, and that it is maintained each year by filing a maintenance of registration form that updates the information previously given. A representative’s certificate, by contrast, expires and has to be renewed.

The consequence for a consumer is simple. Finding the firm in the register does not tell you that the person in front of you is certified, and finding the person does not tell you that the firm is registered or that its registration is unrestricted. Both searches are free, both take under a minute, and the second one is the one most people skip.

The Classes of Activity a Registration Can Carry

A registration is not a general licence to give financial advice. It is granted by sector, and section 13 of the Act respecting the distribution of financial products and services names them: insurance of persons, group insurance of persons, damage insurance, claims adjustment, personal finance and mortgage brokerage. Section 75 provides for registration by sector, and a firm may hold more than one. The register entry shows which.

Reading the sector list correctly matters because the titles attached to it are protected. Insurance of persons is the sector in which advice about life insurance and living benefits contracts is given, and the regulated title attached to it in Quebec is Financial Security Advisor, in French conseiller en sécurité financière. The reserved planning activity is a separate sector with its own protected title, and a firm or a person not registered in it does not use that title. This site uses the regulated title that matches the sector and says so on the about page.

The practical instruction is to compare the sector on the register entry with the product on the table. A contract of insurance of persons should be placed by a firm and a representative registered and certified in insurance of persons. If the product in front of you is a security, neither this registration nor any registration under this Act authorises advice about it, and the register will not say otherwise however carefully you read it.

The Compulsory Professional Liability Insurance Behind a Registration

A registration is not simply a name on a list. Section 76 of the Act requires an applicant firm to establish that it has subscribed for liability insurance and that representatives acting for it without being its employees carry similar cover, and section 83 requires the firm to maintain that insurance in accordance with the regulations. Section 196 gives the Authority the power to fix the requirements by regulation, and it has.

The Regulation respecting firms, independent representatives and independent partnerships, at section 29, and the Regulation respecting the pursuit of activities as a representative, at section 17, set the minimum amounts, which vary with the number of representatives and which are not reproduced here because they are amended without notice. What is worth stating is the shape of the cover rather than its size. The policy must respond to liability arising from fault, including gross fault, and from errors, negligence and omissions by the insured and by its employees, partners and trainees. The regulations provide that cover respecting gross fault may not be excluded from the contract.

The rule that matters most to a consumer is the one about time. Cover must extend beyond the period set out in the contract for a further five years where a registration is revoked, cancelled or suspended, or where activities cease. Complaints about how something was sold surface late, sometimes years after the sale and often after the person who sold it has left the business. The five year tail is the reason a late complaint still meets an insured defendant instead of an empty chair.

The Indemnity Fund, and the Narrow Thing It Covers

Behind the liability insurance sits a second layer that most consumers have never heard of. The Fonds d’indemnisation des services financiers is administered by the Autorité, which acts as its trustee, analyses claims and decides eligibility. It indemnifies victims of fraud, fraudulent tactics or embezzlement committed by an intermediary authorised by the Autorité, in a sector the fund covers, where money or assets were used otherwise than as agreed.

The boundaries are deliberately narrow and worth reading before anyone relies on the fund. Four conditions have to hold together: the intermediary was authorised by the Autorité, a covered financial product or service was involved, fraud or embezzlement occurred, and the claim meets the eligibility standards. The fund does not cover investment losses, fees, returns that failed to materialise, or non-monetary damage such as stress and inconvenience. A disappointing result is not a fraud, and the fund is not a guarantee against either.

A claim is filed within one year of the day the claimant becomes aware of the fraud, with relief available where the claimant can show an inability to act within that period. The ceiling on an indemnity is fixed by regulation and is not printed here; confirm the current figure with the Autorité before relying on it. Anyone who thinks they may need this fund should also read how to spot investment scams, because the patterns that lead to a claim are recognisable well before the money moves.

The Disciplinary Record, and Where It Is Published

The register itself is the first place to look, and it does more than list the compliant. The Autorité describes it as showing whether an individual or a firm has the right to pursue activities, and its entries cover both those meeting the minimum requirements and those barred from practising. An entry that carries a restriction, a suspension or a prohibition is telling you something the firm will not volunteer.

Discipline for a representative’s ethical conduct runs through a self-regulatory chamber rather than through the Autorité. A syndic investigates and lays the complaint, a discipline committee hears it, and the committee’s decisions are published, along with a hearing roll and summaries of the decisions. The Chambre de la sécurité financière and the Chambre de l’assurance de dommages have been merged into a single Chambre de l’assurance following legislation adopted in June 2025, and the chamber has stated that regulations, policies and public protection mechanisms remain in effect through the transition. Confirm the current name and address with the Autorité before you write to it.

Two habits make this part useful rather than ornamental. Search the exact legal name rather than the trade name, because a decision is indexed under the name on the certificate. And read the date and the outcome rather than the headline: a decision reversed on appeal, a matter withdrawn and a sanction served are three different facts that a search result will present in the same typeface.

How to Search the Register for a Firm, Step by Step

Start at the Autorité’s site, at lautorite.qc.ca, and open the register of firms and individuals authorized to practice from the registers section for the general public. It is free, it needs no account, and it is available in French and in English.

Choose the firm search rather than the individual search. Enter the full name of the firm or a portion of it, or, if you have one, the full registration number, NRD number or client number. The Autorité notes that a search term runs between two and one hundred and forty-five characters and that the search ignores accents and capitals, so an approximate spelling will usually still find the entry.

For this firm, the search term is Canadian Wealth Creation Centre, and the registration number is 602293, published in the footer of every page on this site including the compliance page. Search the name first and let the register return the number, rather than the other way round: a number typed straight in confirms only that a number exists, while a name search shows you the entry the way a stranger would find it. Then read the entry rather than glancing at it. Note the sectors, the status, the date the status took effect, and anything recorded as a condition, a restriction or a prohibition.

How to Search the Register for the Person Advising You

Run the second search on the individual, in the same register, using the individual search rather than the firm search. Enter the first name and the complete last name, or a portion of the name, or the full registration, NRD or client number. Ask the person for the exact spelling of their name before you search, and ask in the same breath which firm they are attached to.

Then check four things in the entry. That the certificate is current rather than expired, because certificates expire and registrations do not. That it covers the sector of the product in front of you, which for a life insurance contract means insurance of persons. That the firm named in the entry is the firm whose name is on the paperwork. And that nothing is recorded against the entry as a condition or a restriction.

Do this for the province where you live rather than the province where the person works. Insurance is licensed province by province in Canada, and a certificate issued in Quebec is a Quebec certificate. Outside Quebec the registers are kept by other bodies under other names, and the transparency page on this site names them. Checking is not an insult, and a licensed person expects to be looked up.

What a Registration Does Not Promise

A registration is a floor and not a ranking. It says that a firm met the entry requirements of the Act, carries the compulsory insurance, contributes to the compensation arrangements and has not been cancelled, suspended or restricted. It does not say that the firm is good at its work, that its advice suits you, or that the product it recommends is the best available. The register grades nobody.

It does not promise a result either. Nothing in a registration guarantees an outcome, a value or a return, and no registered firm may suggest otherwise. It does not extend to products outside the sectors on the entry. It does not convert a protected title into one the firm may use. And it is not a character reference: a clean entry today records the absence of a recorded sanction, which is not the same as the absence of a concern.

Nor does it settle the conflict that money creates. This practice is paid by commission from insurers, a fact set out on the transparency page, and no registration removes that interest. The honest use of the register is narrow and real: it tells you that the person and the firm are authorised to do the thing they are proposing to do, which is the first question and never the last one. What is not a fit is discussed at when the strategy does not fit.

What to Check Before You Sign Anything

Ask for the firm’s exact legal name and the exact spelling of the name of the person recommending the contract, and write both down. Then look both up yourself, in the register of the province where you live, and confirm that the authorisation is current, that it reaches your province, and that it covers the class of insurance in front of you.

Then ask for the paperwork the register cannot give you. The illustration, with guaranteed values shown apart from those that are not, which is what a policy illustration is for. The issuing insurer and the exact contract rather than a category. The application as it will be submitted, with every answer recorded on your behalf. What the firm earns on the placement, in writing. What you are left holding if the funding stops early.

Finally, ask what else was considered and why it was set aside. A useful answer names something specific and explains what made it a poorer fit. Two answers should stop the meeting: that nothing else was weighed, and that the alternative is always wrong. None of this is confidential to the firm, because it is your file and your signature, and a refusal to put any of it on paper is itself the answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

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The regulatory disclosures for this firm, including what it is and is not authorised to distribute, are on the compliance page, and the disclosure of how it is paid, along with the instruction to check the register yourself, is on the transparency and compensation page. Where a comparison with a securities based solution is in play, how to choose an investment advisor sets out the questions, and how to spot investment scams sets out the patterns worth recognising early. To ask anything about a registration directly, use the contact page.