It seems like just yesterday that we first started hearing about the COVID 19-virus, and now it’s been almost a year of uncertainty with only a blurry horizon in the future. What that horizon will look like, or when we will reach it, is still unknown but the hope is that we get there soon… and that we can hold our loved ones tight again!

As we all know, life can change in an instant, leaving our best-laid plans torn to pieces. However, it is critically important to pick up the pieces and find the new course we are to take so that despite the interruption, we can get to where we want to be. As a Certified Financial Planner with Wiegers Financial & Benefits for almost seven years, I have experienced with every client some kind of change in their lives and ultimately their financial goals. Given that life is not stagnant, it’s critically important that your plan and goals change with it to keep up.

What kind of life changes can impact your financial plan? Any number of things can change your goals but some of the most common changes are those concerning:

• Job and pension
• Income
• Marital status
• Dependents (children or elderly parents)
• Real assets (e.g. primary residence or rental properties)
• Other investments
• Insurance policies

A proper employee benefits program is a quintessential tool in helping to ensure employee health and well-being. As long as your employees utilize the program, it can help keep them healthy, happy, and focused at work, however, with the changing generations in the workforce – and the fact that millennials now comprise a majority of it – standard employee benefit programs need to change as well.

Younger staff are looking for flexible, digital offerings that let them get what they want out of a plan. They want solutions to support their mental health and wellness. A recent survey indicated that only 53% of Canadians indicated that their mental health was good or very good; this is quite a drop from last year’s report of 67%.[1] An easy solution is to provide an employee and family assistance program (EFAP). While counseling is at the core of an EFAP, it also has many other valuable mental health solutions for employees who are struggling.

A great way to combine the need for flexibility and for wellness is a flex account. A flex account is a pool of money that employees can direct to either a health or wellness spending account. A Health Spending Account (HSA) covers claims for health, dental, and prescription drugs, and is regulated by Canada Revenue Agency. A wellness account, on the other hand, allows you the flexibility of letting your employees choose what they want to be covered.

Some of the most common wellness expenses are gym memberships and sports fees but vet bills and even home office furniture can qualify too. This can be of huge value to employees when at least two-thirds of Canadian businesses have 60% of their staff working from home (and up to 55% of employees will continue to work remotely post-pandemic).[2]

Digital telemedicine offerings are another way that you can offer flexible wellness solutions for your employees. Available through the telephone or through an app, telemedicine offers your employees the ability to connect with a physician or nurse practitioner 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Canadians are showing higher satisfaction rates when meeting with a doctor digitally and many are even saying that they prefer a digital meeting as a first visit.[3]

Having a range of digital and flexible wellness options for your employees gives you not only a leg up on your competition for recruitment but also lets you take care of your employees’ physical and mental wellness. It’s an investment that for most employers, is well worth making.

Matthew Hill, B.A.

Benefits Advisor, Wiegers Financial and Insurance Planning Services Ltd.

As a Canadian farmer, you’ve lived through your fair share of unpredictability. Whether it was the farm crisis or one too many years of lackluster harvests, you took your farm through the worst combinations Mother Nature and the markets could throw at you, beating the odds to build something your family is truly proud of.

Looking back at the ups and downs of farming, you’d never take any of it back. And you want to leave the challenge behind for the next generation so that your family’s legacy can continue to flourish long after you’re gone. Successful farmers are constantly thinking about what’s next. If you’re over 50, planning the future of your farm should be your top task. The work you put in now could set your farm’s estate up for one of the most anticipated outcomes in your entire farming career. You know how rare that can be in the agriculture industry!

Speaking of your career, you’ve worn many hats over the years: accountant, labourer, veterinarian, weatherman, mechanic, scientist – the list goes on. Through the demands of your job, you’ve learned to ask for help when you need it. So if you’re willing to call your neighbour down the road at harvest, you should be willing to work with the expert up the street on financials.

A financial advisor provides leadership when you need it. They have your best interests in mind while navigating the blind spots of your farm’s estate, connecting a knowledgeable team of specialists to determine how to plan your family farm’s future best. The most common regrets farm estate financial advisors hear from farmers are that they wish they would have talked about it either ten years earlier before they lost their health or before inflation led to a big misstep in their tax strategy.

You may be thinking about farm estate planning because you’ve been pressed by your child who’s made sacrifices for the farm, or you’ve witnessed what happens when farmers leave a mess behind. Don’t wait until things fall apart. If you have a lot of unanswered questions about your farm’s estate, proper planning will bring clarity to problems that exist and provide answers that may solve them. Bring in your biggest concerns and prepare to give your financial advisor honest answers to the following questions.

These are the top six considerations when you're farm estate planning:

1. How do I want to spend the rest of my life?

A survey from Aon that shows while Canadian employers are highly concerned about the rising costs of group benefits (due to drug expenses), they still prioritize the productivity and engagement of their employees and recognize the importance that group benefits play in creating healthy employees and a healthy work environment.

Canadian group benefit sponsors were surveyed by Aon to identify their Top 10 benefits and workplace priorities. 

The results were:

Top 10 Workforce Priorities

1. Employee productivity/engagement
2. Employee wellness
3. Attracting, retaining employees; developing skills for changing business environment
4. Workplace mental health
5. Employee financial wellness
6. Family support obligations, the effect on productivity and well-being
7. Chronic illness effect on productivity
8. Multi-generational workforce
9. Delayed retirement – productivity and performance challenges
10. Delayed retirement – employees working past normal retirement age.

Top 10 Group Benefits Priorities

1. Escalating drug costs generally
2. Escalating specialty drug costs in particular
3. Escalating extended health costs generally
4. Chronic illness effect on plan costs
5. Need to personalize employee benefits experience
6. Rising payroll costs (e.g. minimum wage, CPP contributions)
7. Compliance/governance obligations
8. Cost-shifting – public to private
9. The administrative hassle of employee benefits
10. National Pharmacare discussions

“The key takeaway from our survey is that plan sponsors are keenly aware of the need to manage rising benefits costs, but they also put a high priority on ensuring their employees are engaged and healthy,” commented Canadian health & benefits chief actuary Greg Durant. Durant prefaced that although the top priorities sound contradictory, there are ways for employers to achieve a balance – they will just have to “think outside the box” in order to meet both their workforce objectives while creating value for their people. One suggested method to achieve this balance is to create wellness programs that could potentially reduce overall extended health costs.

Aurora Workplace Solutions design & create custom group benefits plans that meet custom organization goals. Read more about their Group Benefits Plans or contact them today to get started!

No one wants to be told they have a terminal or critical illness. If you suffer from a heart attack, stroke, or cancer you could lead a normal life again. However, you need to plan for the financial cost of surviving a life-altering illness. In this article, we discuss key points about critical illness insurance and ask two Wiegers Financial & Benefits staff members with firsthand experience to explain the impact it has had on their lives.

Pat Kyle’s husband was diagnosed with a critical illness a few years ago after suffering a stroke at the age of 52.

Pat says: “You never think it’s going to happen to you. Everyone lives in a bubble. Even the healthiest people may have an illness at some point. In the moment, you’re so removed from your day-to-day and fixated on your situation that you don’t even think about it. In my case, I came back to work and it wasn’t even on my mind to apply. I was so concerned about my husband’s health. It wasn’t my top priority to fill in the application to submit the claim, but I knew it was there.
As the first employee at Wiegers to go through the critical illness insurance process, it was emotional and gratifying to know that I have that piece of the program to support me. It was very helpful to be able to put a claim in and ease the financial burden. It took away stress. Just the fact that we had it made all the difference in the world. That lump sum payment is a beautiful thing.
I’m now an advocate of both critical illness and life insurance. To me, they’re more important than purchasing an RRSP. My husband had a stroke, then a heart attack, and it builds. These things all work together. Strokes can happen at any time. It doesn’t matter what age. There are so many fundraisers or steak nights for people who are sick. You may know someone who has pulled money out of RRSPs to help their child have a chance to survive. Critical illness insurance protects the wealth that you’ve created and that others around you have created, too. It supports the family, not just the person affected by the illness.”

Kim Chicoine’s husband was involved in a serious accident at a young age that left a lot of uncertainty about whether he would survive.

Kim says: “Sitting in the hospital beside my husband, I didn’t have to worry about the finances if things went the other way. Knowing that there wasn’t going to be a change in our finances because we had that critical illness piece in our puzzle was so huge. There was the potential that if his condition didn’t improve, we could have a critical illness payout. We ended up not getting the payout because he got better. It’s great when it pays out, but it’s also great when it doesn’t. The money stress is not there. You know your finances aren’t going to change and you’re covered.”

What is critical illness insurance?

Critical illness insurance is meant to relieve the financial burden of recovery, so you can focus on the task at hand. It can be purchased for children as young as 60 days up to those at or nearing retirement.

It’s one of the newest products on the personal insurance market, having been available in Canada for approximately 20 years and internationally for nearly 40 years.

Critical illness insurance is a “wealth-protecting product”, says Pat Kyle. It keeps your finances at status quo – maintaining your debt, bills, mortgage, etc. – while you focus on getting better.

Why did the need for critical illness insurance arise?

A South African cardiac surgeon, Dr. Marius Barnard, pioneered critical illness insurance after he noticed his surviving patients were struggling financially. While it was excellent that his patients were living after experiencing a life-threatening illness like heart disease, Dr. Barnard observed they experienced a significant drop in their standard of living. The patients who had overcome surgery had emerged to a world where their quality of life suffered due to the costs associated with recovery.

Which conditions are classified as a critical illness?

Each insurance carrier’s definition of critical illness differs slightly. In general, there are 26 covered conditions with the top three being stroke, heart attack, and cancer.

What’s the benefit of using critical illness insurance?

The payout is designed to help support yourself and your family during extremely difficult personal health challenges. You can get policies starting as low as 25 thousand dollars in a tax-free cheque that you don’t need to declare on your tax return.

The value of critical illness insurance is totally dependent on your personal situation, for instance:

• a stay-at-home parent could provide for their family with their partner’s critical illness payout;
• a self-employed individual would need critical illness insurance to cover them in the absence of workplace benefits such as long- and short-term disability;
• or a recent grad would be able to maintain their student debt payments, etc. while going through treatments.

It’s important that you consider both life insurance and critical illness in tandem. Each situation will vary in priority as to when they’re paid out. There is no one-solution-fits-all insurance product.

When is the best time to buy critical illness insurance?

The ideal time to buy critical illness insurance is when you’re healthy. If you’re not in good health, it’s a more difficult application process.

Kim Chicoine’s husband is still young, but his health has changed. If the Chicoine’s didn’t have critical illness insurance prior to the accident, they would likely be declined. Because they had it, they will continue to have it in the future.

Family history also comes into play during the underwriting process of critical illness. Your parents’ diagnoses can affect your application, so it’s best to apply while they’re healthy.

What happens to your life insurance after using critical illness insurance?

Nothing happens to your personal life insurance after you use critical illness insurance. It depends on your personal life insurance that you’ve been medically underwritten for with an insurance carrier. If you’ve continued to pay the premiums, your life insurance is still enforced. It is difficult to get life insurance after making a critical insurance claim, so it’s better to have both products beforehand. You’ll want your advisor to package life insurance with critical insurance when you’re healthy.

How long, on average, does it take to get paid after a diagnosis?

There is a clause that says you need to pass a survival period of 30 days. After that, payment can take anywhere from a few weeks to a month. After the survival period, your doctor will need to give evidence to support the need. The decision to payout is dependent on the attending physician’s statement and all other sources.

How can the funds be used once they’ve been distributed?

If you pass the 30-day survival period, there are no restrictions on how you use the money once it’s been paid out. You decide how to use it. For example, you could use it to cover experimental medical treatment to see specialists that may not be covered by the Canadian health care system.

What will purchasing a premium do?

You can upgrade a base policy with a simple lump sum payout by adding riders. When you add additional riders it adds additional costs, but it can help in certain situations to have the return of premiums.

Here are a few riders to consider:

1. Return of premium on death rider: the lump sum won’t get paid out, but your beneficiary will be paid out what you have paid into the policy.
2. Disability waiver premium: if you become disabled, the insurance company waives the premiums.
3. Rider name? If you have a policy for 15 years, you can give back the policy and get back everything you put into it. Once the policy is finished you get all your premiums back.
4. Second event rider: pays out if the second condition differs from the first.

Prioritize your future self

Pat Kyle says: “Critical illness insurance manages the risk of what could happen in your early years, so you don’t have to take money out of savings. My financial priorities are 1. life insurance, 2. critical illness insurance, 3. slush fund, 4. RRSP. Yes, saving is important. But if something comes up your savings aren’t going to last. In my opinion, it’s not about 'should I get critical illness insurance?' it’s 'why shouldn’t I have critical illness insurance?' Protect your future self.”

Kim Chicoine says: “Peace of mind is important. In Pat’s situation, it paid out, in mine it didn’t. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the hospital without it. I wouldn’t have been able to focus on my husband; I would have been stressed out about our finances.”

Your ability to earn an income is worth more than your house and vehicle combined. Everyone gets coverage for their material possessions and it’s important to insure yourself, too. The best time to start the process is when you’re healthy and you don’t think you’ll ever need it. Speak to a financial advisor at Wiegers Financial & Benefits about finding an affordable critical illness policy.