The TK Advisor - The TK Group Ottawa Blog about Life Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, Wealth Mangement and Estate Planning

Holiday season may be a good time to review your financial instruments !Life Insurance , Critical Illness Insurance , Disability Insurance and Long Term Care

Your year is almost coming to an end when we all enjoy the festive holiday season . Like many entrepreneurs and professionals , the song said " I've been everywhere man I've been everywhere  ". Our business and personal lives are so intertwined that we sometimes forget to take the time to think about ourselves . As a business owner , I seam to be on a constant alert to solve my clients problems and make sure I have done everything to take care of them . Like me , I work with a number of legal and accounting advisor's that are highly motivated to serve their clients .

This may be a good time for busy people to take stock of their own personal situation . How important are you in the big picture of your world ? How important is your family ?

Without you , everything else can fall apart at the seams . I know that you hate looking at insurance because of the connotations that the word "insurance" brings . Think of the word "financial protection " instead of insurance . How important is your financial protection ? Dust off all those insurance contracts , if you can find them , and look at your safety net . Are the contracts in place ? Are the right beneficiaries designated in the contract ? Are you sure that group disability policy is not discriminating against you the executive ? Do you have enough cash to recover from a critical illness ? Are you paying for policies that are useless ? Have you thought about what would happen to you if your spouse became critically ill ? Have you coordinated your contracts with your existing corporate structures ?

Why has another year gone by where you have not taken care of the most important persons needs ? You are that person and take a moment to reflect , what if ?????????????????

Do not buy insurance buy freedom instead ?

Insurance coverage is not what you need and you already know that .What you need is cash to take care of your heirs when you die , take care of you and your family at time of disability and or critical illness .

Just today I was delivering a critical illness policy to my client when he asked me if a mutual of acquaintance of ours has critical illness coverage . I asked him why he is asking me that and he said that the individual has to undergo a triple bypass.

Can you , your family and your business survive a major illness ? This illness is not just yours but everyone else's who depends on you.

You are absolutely correct when you say that you can be over insured however I have never heard anyone say that the cheque we delivered on death , disability or critical illness was too much . I have heard though , I wish we would have bought more .

Never lose sight why you would want to buy protection : freedom , comfort ,safety , business continuance ,education ,standard of living , immediate medical treatment anywhere , business relief ,you love someone , estate preservation , keeping family united are only a few reasons !

Insurance Premiums can be costly and they differ from one insurer to another

So you think there is not much difference in premium from one insurer to the next . Think again ! With todays information age one would think that insurers would be close in their premium structure for same type of product . We are just completing an insurance audit for a client that bought policies 5 years a go and has not seen his adviser since that time . The client currently has a 10 year Renewable and Convertible term policy with Standard Life . The client needs permanent coverage and requested that we convert his existing policy to a minimum funded Universal Life plan . Easy thing to do was to fill out a conversion form and without medicals the policy gets delivered in a week or two . We asked the client how was his health and he said no issues that he knows about . We decided that the hustle free conversion root was not what we do and we put the conversion on hold . Why ? Research was needed into what our new found client could obtain in premiums with proof of good health . Yes he is going to save money !

Here is a list of premiums on a 1 Million of  coverage which includes Standard Life conversion he would get by filling out a form .

Monthly Premiums : Sun Life  $ 727.04 , ManuLife $ 759.22 , Industrial Alliance $769.39 , Great West Life $ 786.56 ,Transamerica Life $ 795.83 , Empire $801.83 ,AIG $ 839.29 And Standard Life $ 931.97 .

Easy thing would have been just to fill out the form and go on with our lives . When the client is in good health , always apply with a insurer that gives more favorable rates . We as independent advisor's never know which insurer will be competitive at a given client's age .

Insurance Rates , insurance coverage and insurance company underwriting standards differ from one insurer to the next.

Which type of insurance suits your needs ?

There are many types of insurance available in the marketplace and here are some of them : Personal Disability , Key Person Disability Insurance , Partnership or Shareholder Disability buyout coverage , Office Overhead Disability Insurance , Corporate owned executive disability coverage, Whole Life Insurance , Universal Life Insurance , Term to 100 Life insurance , short term insurance [ 5 year,10 year ,15 year and 20 year ] , Critical Illness Insurance and Long Term Care .

The real value you should look for is choosing a "INDEPENDENT" broker who is working with a number of insurers and is informed about the differences within each plan type . Design of product and premiums differ from one insurer to the other. As I say to my clients , choosing the correct product and applying it to their own situation is where my true value is to their planning process .

I believe that Critical Illness insurance is the most versatile product for individuals , partnerships and corporations . Unfortunately , not everyone qualifies to obtain this coverage as underwriting criteria focuses not only on your health but that of your brother , sister ,parents. Never assume that you are not insurable , we have several years a go insured a client with impaired health by approaching 12 of our insurers . The insurance was to be assigned to the bank who made the coverage a condition of a corporation receiving a 10 million dollar loan for expansion .

Canada is not the only place to buy insurance , we can create a solution to attempt to secure insurance coverage on a Canadian resident through a US insurer . TK Group is part of Barrington Wealth Partners and we have strong underwriting clout as well as a group of insurers that we work with on a regular basis .

Never give up trying to get coverage and get it from a independent producer .