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Guaranteed Interest Rates with Annuities

When inflation is in the news there is increased focus on guaranteed interest type products, namely, annuities. But what exactly is an annuity and how does it work?

An annuity offers your client, the investor, an opportunity to relinquish a lump sum of money in exchange for a guaranteed periodic level cash flow. The periodic amount your client receives is based on their age, gender and prevailing market rates. There are two main types of annuities: a “term certain annuity”, where a period of time is specified for the cash flow and a “lifetime annuity” where the cash flow is guaranteed for life. In either case, the market risk is taken out of the equation as the cash flow is guaranteed for the pre-determined amount of time. Here are a few more factors to consider with your client: Continue reading “Guaranteed Interest Rates with Annuities” →

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Securing Guaranteed Interest Rates with Annuities

Disability Insurance: Is Employee Coverage Enough?

“I have coverage at work”. This is oftentimes a client’s response when individual disability insurance is mentioned or suggested. There is no question that group Long Term Disability (LTD) is a valuable benefit to have, and certainly better than no coverage at all, but it may not completely solve the critical issue of income replacement or be a sufficient safety net.

Unfortunately, people become ill and accidents happen. And when illness or accident does strike, it tends to be unwanted, unexpected and unwelcome. The most unfortunate part being that most people are completely unprepared for the financial setback that a disability can cause, leaving them without the income they need to support themselves and their family.

Here are a few things for your client to consider when weighing additional disability coverage: Continue reading “Disability Insurance: Is Employee Coverage Enough?” →

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Disability Insurance: Is Your Employee Coverage Enough?

Learning From Experience: Rimba’s Story

Family traditions can make for great stories, particularly when everyone gathers and recalls the birth of a tradition and the events that have kept it alive. In this installment of ‘Learning from Experience’, what could have been an inconsequential find, became a beloved family heirloom that sparked a decades-long tradition and a treasure trove of fond memories. Proper planning has poised the family tradition to live on for generations to come. Continue reading “Learning From Experience: Rimba’s Story” →

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Learning From Experience: Rimba’s Story

What To Do If Your Client is Declined, Rated or Postponed for Insurance

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We have all been there… after a great conversation with a client, you submit their insurance application only to find out a few weeks later that the application cannot be approved as submitted. Either there’s a rating for additional premium or the client is outright declined. Either way, it can be a tough pill for the client to swallow and accept; especially because they most likely perceive themselves as completely “healthy”, regardless of the medications they may be taking.

So, what can you do to avoid these types of disappointments, or to help them out when no one could have seen it coming? Continue reading “What To Do If Your Client is Declined, Rated or Postponed for Insurance” →

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Avoid Underwriting Surprises!

The Best of Both Worlds in a TermPerm Blend

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For the majority of families, life insurance needs will change over time. Typically, more coverage is required while your client’s family is still young and building their wealth, with a decreasing amount required as the family finances mature.

Most life insurance policies are designed to provide a level amount of coverage for the lifetime of the policy, making it challenging to fund the policy on an ongoing basis. However, if you’re considering the best overall solution for your client, the decision between term versus permanent insurance doesn’t have to be an either/or situation – your client can have both! Continue reading “The Best of Both Worlds in a TermPerm Blend” →

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The Best of Both Worlds: Term and Perm Insurance

The Gender Risk: What’s the Difference?

When primitive men and women discovered fire, it changed their very existence. Food and shelters could be heated, not to mention providing illumination and some degree of protection from the animal kingdom predators that roamed the planet. Not quite as dramatic except to those of us in the life insurance industry, the employment of actuarial science in the late 17th century provided kindling to the underwriting fire. This included the production of life tables and application of compound interest to the challenge of calculating the present value of the future liability, the very foundation of life insurance premiums.

What does this have to do with gender? In the early days, not very much. It was all an actuary could do to wade through individual birth and death records to calculate premiums based on the still most important risk factor, the age of the life being insured. No distinction between male and female was made and, as a result, unisex pricing was the norm. Around 1880, the rate of male mortality started to rise and astute actuaries the world over eventually began to reflect those differences in the pricing of life insurance rates. (1). The mortality/gender gap is especially pronounced in older lives, where 57% of all those aged 65 are female and by age 85 women make up 67% of the population (2). In Canada, women, on average, live 4 years longer than men, making the actuarial argument that men should pay more for life insurance (3). While Canadian insurance companies take these differences into account when pricing life insurance, it is not always the universal view. Since 2012, the European Union prohibits pricing based on gender for life, health and even auto insurance, raising the age-old question of fairness; should a lower risk group, in this case women, subsidize the higher-risk group, male policyholders (4)? Continue reading “The Gender Risk: What’s the Difference?” →

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The Gender Risk: What’s the Difference?

CIDI: Enhancing Your Client’s Benefit Package

As an Advisor, you probably get this question all of the time: which is more important, disability or critical illness insurance? But as an Advisor, you also know that both types of insurance can be equally important and most clients should have both in their insurance portfolio.

Disability insurance (DI), whether part of a group plan or even as a stand-alone policy, generally will not cover a client’s full income. This is a concern since out-of-pocket expenses typically increase anytime something medically prevents people from working for an extended period of time. Likewise, any additional supplemental costs may only partially be covered by your client’s health insurance – depending on their coverage. Your client could be faced with a shortfall even with full disability coverage; this is where critical illness (CI) can help fill the gap.

Medical expenses currently rank as the number three cause of bankruptcy in Canada. Despite this, CI sales continue to get outpaced by life insurance quite dramatically in Canada. In fact, in 2022, only 8% of insurance applications were for critical illness insurance.

This gap signifies an opportunity for you, the Advisor. Below are some typical concerns that your client may express and how to address them when discussing the prospect of bundling CI with a DI policy: Continue reading “CIDI: Enhancing Your Client’s Benefit Package” →

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Enhancing Your Benefits with Critical Illness and Disability Insurance

A Focus on Women Clients

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A lot has changed over the past 30 years – the world in which our mothers and grandmothers lived is certainly not the same as the world in which our daughters and granddaughters will continue to live. And although this industry has seen some much-needed changes over these decades, we still have a lot to learn when it comes to our women clients and their financial needs.

It seems obvious, but there are things that make a woman client different from a man client. In response to that, your sales style, sales process, assumptions and sales strategies may be different when communicating. The truth is that the future success of your business could depend on understanding that there are indeed differences and acting accordingly. Continue reading “A Focus on Women Clients” →

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Evolving Dynamics in Planning for Sound Financial Futures

What’s Your Why

It’s hard to imagine an industry that has a greater positive influence in society than ours. You as an Advisor truly make a difference – you are there to help your clients when they are going through their most difficult moments. In spite of this, there remains a perception that an Advisor’s focus can be to make a commission. However, if you’ve managed a claim on behalf of a client, you know how unfair that idea can be. It is also not reflective of the genuine value Advisors provide to Canadians every single day.

At its core, “what” you do is really quite simple: you provide access to insurance planning, as well as potential investment and financial planning, to your prospects and clients. That’s important for sure, but is it emotionally compelling? Most people would say that it’s not. However, the reasons “why” people go through the financial planning process are often rooted in love, compassion and consideration and that is the truly compelling part. Yet, sometimes Advisors focus on the “what”, rather than the “why”. If asked about the role, it can be difficult to articulate the value you bring in an emotionally compelling way – even after years of being successful in the business. Continue reading “What’s Your Why” →