With 1 in 2 households in Canada suffering financial hardships due to death, disability, or illnesses, this impact to Canadians and their families can be major. Additionally about a third of Canadians currently have trouble financially retiring at age 65.

When you think of the scenarios, it’s not always the individual’s fault either. Often these tough scenarios are accidents or bad luck. My goal is to educate and let Canadians know that there are many preventative actions you can take to tackle this problem.

Unfortunately most people don’t take action until it is too late. When it comes to insurance or even financial hardship, most people look away, dislike the topic or don’t even want to talk about it. However we believe this to be quite unhealthy. In our eyes, it’s not fair to risk the next generation’s future, due to poor planning.

Now most Canadians, they speak to the banks and work with the advisors there. However, what often happens is that the bank advisors can only use their bank products to help a customer. So even if they know a competitor’s insurance product or fund is better for the customer, they would only be able to advise then on their own products.

We also find that bank advisors move from branch to branch, thus losing that personal relationship and individual trust.

Our process focuses on starting to get to know the individual first. With the pandemic, we are also running most of our meetings online, and thus we see individuals across Canada, virtually. So even if we move or the client moves, we can maintain that personalized connection and service them.

Once we understand the client’s individual needs, their story and their goals, we then focus on a comprehensive strategy that fills in the gaps that are needed. It could come in the form of insurance planning where we need to make sure that they have the right, protection is in place so that their income is well protected. Once the defensive strategies are in place, we then focus on the offensive strategies.

This could be financially preparing for a home, a vacation fund or retirement. The optimal strategies to do that could come in the form of taking advantage of the ideal Canadian benefit at the right time, or implementing tax advantaged strategies.

The common questions we get asked are, how do we reduce the high income tax that we as Canadians need to contribute. Outside of RRSP, we also encourage writing off business expenses, or even interest rates on investment loans.

We also get asked which one is better term or permanent insurance. One thing we always tell our clients is that, if you look for something, you are going to find it. If you search up negative information about a specific insurance type, you will find the negative details. The same for positive details.

Ultimately, regardless of whichever insurance, or whatever Canadian benefit, these are all just tools that are available to us. In each and every situation, a specific tool is more ideal, and depending on the goal. This is why, in our company, no one tool is better than the other, but there are plans that are better than the other. It is our mission to implement the right plan for a specific client.

Our service doesn’t revolve around any particular bank or insurance company. By partnering with a large number of companies across Canada, we have more tools on our tool belt that we can use for our clients.

Once a plan is implemented for a client, our work isn’t done. We believe in long term business relationships. If all you needed was a quick insurance quote, an online robot can do that. After a plan is implemented, we reach out to our clients 2-3 times for an annual review. Just because some systems were implemented once, doesn’t mean they will work well forever. It requires constant review and observations. Life goals and scenarios also change, such as getting married or having kids. With the diversity and complexity of our lives, the cookie cutter financial plan, in our view, no longer works.

We also work closely with business owners because they are busy enough as it is running the business and making it profitable. We work in the background helping business owners prepare for the worse, without taking up their time. Often when a business owner gets sick, the business suffers and so does the family of all those affected by the business. Our focus is to make sure that if a business owner does fall critically ill, funds are available to hire someone to replace that key person. The funds to be able to keep the business going, and help the business recover.

With weekly training with our advisors, we are able to ensure that everyone is always up-to-date. If there are any advisors working with a complicated scenario of a client, we want more advisor eyes on it. Together we can capture all the opportunities, and make sure that we have properly researched all solutions that are ideal for a particular client.

By providing an approachable method for Canadians to access the financial strategy they need, we believe we can positively impact Canada one person at a time. When it comes to compensation we do a hybrid of consultation or commission based. A small percent of our clients prefer to manage everything themselves, they are knowledgeable and love to invest. For them we don’t manage any of their assets or systems, instead they come to us purely for consultation and ensure that they are on track. For those that can’t be bothered and prefer to be managed by us, and have us report to them, we don’t charge the client, rather the banks, insurance companies, or financial institution pays us.

It allows Canadains who are just getting started, and don’t wish to invest on their own, to still get advice and guidance.