PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Financial PlannerFrom saving for your child’s education; to planning a vacation, setting aside funds for retirement income, or managing your finances during retirement, I can help you create an investment portfolio that meets your needs.

Mutual Funds Mutual funds offer long, medium and short term investments that many investors use as part of their overall financial security plan. Mutual funds allow individuals to pool their savings in a diverse portfolio of investments managed by professional money managers.

Guaranteed Segregated Fund Policies Segregated fund policies are long-term investments that offer capital guarantees.

Life Insurance Our firm brokers life insurance to ensure you get an excellent rate plus the right product to meet your needs.

•Tax Planning Using Investments

I also offer tax-advantaged strategies, including:

  • Registered education savings plans (RESPs)
  • Registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs)
  • Registered retirement income funds (RRIFs)

Disability Insurance

Accidents and illnesses are unfortunate facts of life. Disability insurance coverage is designed to help protect your most valuable asset – your ability to earn an income, which can be jeopardized if tragedy strikes.

Critical Illness Insurance

A critical illness or condition, such as a heart attack, cancer or stroke, can turn your life upside down. It can affect you physically, emotionally and financially. Insurance can protect both you and those close to you from the financial effects of a critical illness.

Plan to anticipate changing circumstances

Financial AdviceFinancial planning must anticipate change. Your plan will reflect your specific financial goals and objectives, with a consideration of your level of investment risk tolerance.

Your plan can be flexible enough to anticipate life’s many changes. Financial circumstances and responsibilities often change over time such as a career or income change; the birth and education of your children or grandchildren; major purchases such as a home; retirement; and other life events, such as a disability or need for long-term care.

GROUP BENEFIT CONSULTING

Our team of benefits specialists has the experience and qualifications you expect. With experience in the insurance industry, our senior team members have developed an in-depth understanding of corporate benefits plan design, health and welfare plans, underwriting concepts, and cost-saving approaches.

Benefits as Unique as You Are

Simply put, your benefits should be as unique as your business. Therefore, you need the specialized expertise we can deliver. We work effectively as an extension of your human resources department. Unlike a generic, off-the-shelf plan, your benefits program is designed with your objectives in mind.

What Group Benefits Services Do We Provide?

• Monitoring and communication of industry trends
• Benefits plan assessment, design, and monitoring
• Plan renewal
• Brokering your plan
• Managed healthcare initiatives

Communication of Industry Trends

With the changing face of the insurance marketplace, it’s reassuring to have our firm on your side. We work hard to keep you informed of all the latest trends and products, both domestic and international. We communicate with you in a variety of ways:

• Client relationships—open communication with our team
• The Informer—bimonthly information bulletin
• Client seminars—scheduled periodically throughout the year

Benefits Plan

Strategic Planning for Benefits

We discuss and analyze key factors that may affect your benefit planning.

Your Custom-Designed Plan

We create custom benefits plans (traditional, flexible benefit designs, or healthcare spending accounts) based not only on our consultation with you but also on the latest industry products that best meet your needs.

Employee Communication

We help you develop employee handouts and other communications materials.

Monitoring Your Plan

We monitor your benefits program, actively making recommendations, so it continues to serve the needs of your business and reflects the latest industry trends.

Monitoring Your Claims Experience

Each quarter, we complete an assessment of your claims to give you an accurate picture of how your benefits plan is being used by plan members, so there are no financial surprises for you, the plan sponsor.

Saving You Money

As with all of our services, when it comes to ways to save you money, we give you options, including the most up-to-date and innovative solutions available internationally—before they become commonplace.

Plan Renewal

Annual Plan Review

At least once a year, we analyze the financial arrangements for your benefits plan. We assess the competitiveness of your current benefits arrangement to help you take advantage of the latest domestic and international developments.

Negotiations with Insurers

Our in-depth knowledge of the providers and their approaches to underwriting allows us to negotiate the best possible arrangements for you. In addition, you benefit from the negotiating leverage that we have built through our more than 100 clients.

Brokering Your Plan

We broker your plan to a large selection of providers, ensuring that your current arrangements are the very best the industry has to offer you. The advantage for you comes in the higher number of responses our tendering receives—you gain more choice.

Preparation

We have the technical expertise necessary to ensure quoting carriers are aware of the complexities of your plan. The resulting proposals are more competitive—and more useful. We

• Analyze carrier proposals
• Develop a report to make it easier for you to make an informed decision about your provider
• Help you schedule presentations by the leading quoting carriers—personal contact between you and the provider is critical to a good working relationship

Pension Administration

We have assembled an impressive team of pension professionals with over 100 years’ combined experience in the pension benefits field.

Proactive Defined Benefit Pension Administration Services

Qualified experts meet your special pension administration needs

We offer a wide range of services and solutions, including

• Providing support in the development and implementation of pension program objectives and design
• Preparing pension plan texts and amendments stemming from changes in plan rules and government regulations
• Responding quickly to your questions and concerns
• Maintaining employee records using the latest CPAS/db pension administration system technology
• Processing benefits on termination, death, or retirement
• Preparing annual member statements, member benefits summaries, and government compliance reports

Pension Adjustments (PAs) and Pension Adjustment Reversals (PARs)

Our on-site actuarial team will meet the technical demands of your plan in a professional, cost-effective manner. Our clients have convenient access to the following actuarial services to develop and present effective employee communications material, review and update your investment policy statements and trust agreements; monitor and report   on the relative performance of your fund investments; and provide plan wind-ups and conversions to money purchase plans.

Comprehensive Actuarial Services

• Funding and solvency valuations
• Legislative and Canadian Institute of Actuaries compliance
• Plan design liability and service cost review to support benefits upgrades or labour negotiation sessions
• Pension valuation and expense calculations
• Cash flow projections and asset/liability matching
• Marriage breakdown valuations
• Plan wind-up and conversion valuations

SEGREGATED FUNDS

What is the investor sentiment towards Investment Funds?

Investment funds offer investors a superior means of accumulating wealth through a broad range of investment solutions based on professional investment principles in a regulated environment.

There are eight benefits of Investment Funds which the investor appreciates:

  • Professional portfolio management
  • Manage risk through diversification
  • Opportunities for foreign and domestic investment
  • Oversight by professional managers
  • Low entry investment amount
  • Solutions meet a wide range of needs
  • Easy to buy and sell
  • Convenient administration

The rapid growth in the investor confidence of using investment funds escalated to over a half trillion dollars. This indicates the validity of using investment funds in an investment portfolio.

Wealth Management and Tax

Most successful investment strategies hinge on holding investment funds. Ten important wealth management tactics can help maximize your long-term investment returns. These tactics, in particular, have stood the test of time for investors interested in building a powerful investment portfolio.

Here is a list of ten investment tactics to help you achieve financial independence.

1. Deduct interest. If you plan to borrow money to finance your expenses, consider arranging your financial affairs so you can borrow to purchase investments. Interest on this type of borrowing remains fully tax-deductible for as long as you continue to hold income-generating investments (outside of an RRSP).

2. Consider income splitting. Income splitting is the idea of moving income to family members who are in a lower tax bracket than you. To split family income with your spouse, you can invest the lower-earning spouse’s income, while the higher earner pays family living expenses and taxes. You may also want to contribute to a spousal RRSP. If you own a business, where applicable, pay your spouse a salary for work performed on behalf of your business. To split income with children, you can give them cash or any other assets (if they are over 18).

3. Structure your investments for tax. To avoid paying high taxes on income from earnings or interest, structure your investments to earn primarily capital gains outside your registered accounts.

4. Defer the tax. If you are investing in non-registered holdings but have not maximized your RRSP, you may be losing the opportunity to deduct up-to-the-maximum contributions from income. You also miss out on the pre-retirement tax deferral during all the time that elapses until you retire. You could be deferring these tax liabilities on investment income until you withdraw the funds held within your RRSP or your RRIF.

5. Create trusts. Trusts are ideal if you hope to transfer income and/or capital gains to a beneficiary. If you own a business, you can even use trusts to pass the business to your children for tax purposes while still retaining some control. Make sure you obtain expert advice.

6. Donate. Charitable donations are effective wealth management tools because they provide you with a tax break while making a real difference for a cause important to you.

7. Develop a plan. As with all things in life, good intentions are seldom enough. A professional investment plan can ensure you reach your financial goals while not depending on Canada Pension Plan (CPP). Begin to envision independent financial success.

8. Start early as time adds value to money. Habitually pay yourself first every pay-cheque before you pay your bills. Due to inflation (now running at 2.8% over 12 months), you may need well over $1.5 million to retire 30 years from now. At 10%, $9,000 invested annually over 30 years will amount to $1.5 million. If you delay investing for just 10 years, you need to invest $26,000 annually over the remaining 20 years to achieve the same result. Wait another 10 years, and you will need to invest approximately $90,000 per year over 10 short remaining years to achieve the $1.5 million total. Time will work against you if you procrastinate.

Source: Statistics Canada: On a 12-month basis, the All-items CPI rose by 2.8% in January, up from the 2.2% rise in December.

The Rule of 72: divide your annual percentage rate of return (yield) into 72. The answer will tell you how many years are necessary to double your money.

9. Maximize your RRSP contribution. As long as one earns an income (or where an individual has unused contribution room), an RRSP contribution creates the biggest tax break available to most Canadians. Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) allows you to contribute up to 18% of your previous year’s earned income up to a maximum threshold, minus pension adjustments reported by employers.

Note: The tax savings are calculated at a compound annual rate of 10%, without income tax deducted. Taxation is deferred until income is withdrawn from a registered investment. Conservative calculations can also be run at 5%, which may be safer, given the recent market decline.

10. Invest with a global perspective. Different economies worldwide can experience market gains at differing times or at the same time depending on where each economy is in its own distinct market cycle. Markets such as Canada and the USA influence one another closely in their market cycles. Canada’s stock market capitalization is less than 3% of the total of the entire world. Therefore, it makes sense to invest in foreign funds investing in foreign securities. This can be accomplished by purchasing Canadian-managed foreign mutual funds that invest in foreign equities—and your RRSP can hold up to 100% foreign content.

INVESTING AND RETIREMENT

You will spend many years working. One day you will need to retire with a good income generated from your accumulated investments. Retirement planning is never finished. You will need to manage your investments carefully to maximize their return through life’s various stages as you move closer to, and during, retirement.

Through good markets and volatile markets, we help individuals, families, and business owners with their financial needs. We realize one program doesn’t fit all investor needs, so we will take into consideration your changing goals—for example, if you have other short-term needs, we will help you tailor an investment plan to suit your specific goals.

We can help you to re-evaluate your investment strategy and advise you as we develop a balanced plan that is best suited to your overall investment needs. Retirement planning must ensure the best use of capital with minimization of tax during the investment growth stages, as well as during the period when you will depend on your investments to create wealth as it transfers to income.

GROUP RETIREMENT CONSULTING

In addition to specialized knowledge of pension and retirement vehicles, our Group Retirement Consulting Services team has extensive experience in the financial services industry, including the following areas:

Strategic Planning for Retirement

We discuss and analyze key factors that may affect your corporate retirement program.

Communicating with Your Employees

At least once each year, we coordinate, develop, and deliver seminars for your employees.

Monitoring Your Program

We monitor your program so it continues to work optimally for you with respect to:

• Pricing (is it appropriate for your needs?)
• Investment fund selection and ongoing performance
• Technological advancements that ease your administrative duties
• Communication with you and your members

Marketing Your Program

Every four to five years, we tender your program to the entire market of providers, ensuring your arrangements continue to be the best the industry has to offer. We highlight all technical aspects of your program to appropriate carriers. We complete an analysis of competitive quotes and prepare a report with our recommendations. We then schedule presentations for leading potential providers to present their services directly to you.

GROUP EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

In addition to specialized knowledge of pension and retirement vehicles, our Group Retirement Consulting Services team has extensive experience in the financial services industry, including the following areas:

Strategic Planning for Retirement

We discuss and analyze key factors that may affect your corporate retirement program.

Communicating with Your Employees

At least once each year, we coordinate, develop, and deliver seminars for your employees.

Monitoring Your Program

We monitor your program so it continues to work optimally for you with respect to:

• Pricing (is it appropriate for your needs?)
• Investment fund selection and ongoing performance
• Technological advancements that ease your administrative duties
• Communication with you and your members

Marketing Your Program

Every four to five years, we tender your program to the entire market of providers, ensuring your arrangements continue to be the best the industry has to offer. We highlight all technical aspects of your program to appropriate carriers. We complete an analysis of competitive quotes and prepare a report with our recommendations. We then schedule presentations for leading potential providers to present their services directly to you.