Scantlebury Wealth Management

It is probably a question that has not occurred to anyone recently.  I often ask people that simple question: can I review your disability insurance? If you haven’t guessed, the answer is usually a polite refusal. People often tell me that they have enough insurance, that their group insurance is fine and it works or that they have no need of disability insurance. In that same breath, I can also say that I have lost count of the number of people who have run into trouble later. That later account usually doesn’t come from the same people to whom I have asked the question. It usually comes to my attention from a friend, a colleague or someone we have in common.  The story comes to my ears as a health event; one that was “unanticipated, unpredictable and unexpected”. It is seen as an incident that could not have been foretold. It could be a white collar professional who started experiencing the pains that come with fibromyalgia or polymyalgia, or a blue collar professional who e...

Most Canadians tend to be reassured by Canada’s universal healthcare system. We are so reassured that we hold a simple belief: if we get sick, all we need to do is go to the hospital. The system will take care of the rest. To be fair, our public health care system does excel at immediate emergency care, basic hospital stays, and standard physician visits. However, increasingly, many of us are finding that it has critical vulnerabilities. This is especially true when it comes to surgical wait times and the approval of new medications, treatments and therapies. Accordingly, if someone’s provincial health care coverage falls short, patients face a grim ultimatum: wait while their health deteriorates, or pay out-of-pocket for private or out-of-country treatment. Increasingly, an unimaginable situation is becoming increasingly common: spending $200,000 now for out-of-country treatment, so that you could appeal a decision by your provincial government later. For most families, absorbing such...

Quite recently, I was asked a simple question: I have my Travel Insurance Policy on my credit card,  why should I buy a separate policy? My gut reaction was simple: never depend on your credit card insurance and never buy it from a bank. With twenty years of employment history between various  financial and financial education firms, my reaction is you should try to go to the correct professional  to get your financial service.  As a guy who is licensed to sell Life and Accident Sickness Insurance, I thought I knew what was  best. After all, I have sold these policies for a few years and I had a sense of them. So, of course, my  gut said “every individual should buy their own Travel Insurance and buy it from an independent Insurance Advisor; and never walk into a retail bank branch to do the same. Yet, my mind said  something else: “are you sure?”. Accordingly, I did research and I was surprised.  I was surprised by the range and variability of th...

Some might ask why a financial professional would talk about shredding. Shredding after all has nothing to do with Life or Accident & Sickness Insurance. Shredding has nothing to do with exempt market investments, mutual funds, segregated funds or GICs. Reducing the level of “paper” - either the digital or physical version - has nothing to do with reducing debt or taking out a credit card. So why is a financial professional talking about shredding? Well, that is all true. There is not a direct link between shredding and the numbers that come along with a financial plan. Or put differently, while putting more money into an RRSP will bring someone closer to retirement, there is no corollary which says that putting more documents into shredder will do the same.  With that being said, if one shreds their financial documents properly, it does mean that that same person will increase their level of privacy. Shredding more reduces the ability of hackers, thieves, criminals and/or othe...

When I gained my Life Insurance Licence, I had one belief: there is very little difference between life insurance companies. After all, don’t all life insurance companies provide a product which pays out at death? Isn’t that all one needs to know about life insurance? I quickly learned that the answer to those questions is not that simple. For example, all the big Canadian Banks partner with the largest Canadian Insurance companies to provide creditor insurance products in their retail bank branches. At this point, Canada Life Assurance Company works with ScotiaBank, TD Canada Trust, CIBC, & RBC; while SunLife Financial works with BMO. Manufacturers Life ensures that First National has a creditor plan.  However, there is a problem with this type of life and/or health insurance: there is no guaranteed payout. Now, for many people, this might seem odd; however, it is the truth. Because Canadian Banks cannot sell individual life or health insurance policies in their bank branches,...

When buying a house, many people have a list of professionals that they go and see. They find a realtor and a real estate lawyer. They find a mortgage broker or a banker to secure the mortgage. From that point, there is a search for a home inspector, a property insurer and sometimes a designer or architect. Buying a house is an important and time consuming endeavour. In all of that confusion, it is understandable that many new homeowners forget to phone their life insurance agent. For when their banking officer or mortgage broker asks them one question - "Would you like to have mortgage life insurance?" – they often say yes. It is another box ticked and something else has been removed from their plate. However, with over ten years in the financial industry, I know that that decision can be a costly one. I first read about the costs of Creditor Insurance or bank-provided Mortgage Life Insurance from Bob Aaron. He is a Toronto area lawyer. In an article in the Toronto Star, dat...

If you speak to most Trustees-in-Bankruptcy in Canada, you will find that it is pretty hard to go bankrupt from medical expenses alone. Freida Richer, a Vice President and Principal at Grant Thornton Limited, noted this in an interview with Global News; and, if you think about it, that makes sense.   We, in Canada, are very proud of our social safety net. We believe in the idea that government programmes should cover basic physician and hospital expenses; while other social programmes should provide financial assistance to Canadians who are unable to work because of disability or illness. Accordingly, Canadians don’t receive bills from our hospitals for procedures like a hip transplant or cancer operations.  As a society, our employers and ourselves often go the extra step by creating Extended Health Benefits through Group Benefit Programmes or by purchasing private products individually. According to the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA), some 24 mil...

I was recently asked a question that bothered me: Why should a married couple who have no children acquire a life insurance policy? The question shook me because I have more than a decade in the financial industry, and more than thirty years of personal experience; so a number of sad stories came to mind. One particular story was stronger than the rest though.  The couple were acquaintances of mine and they had just gotten married. They were in their twenties and in reasonably good shape. The husband was on a business trip and died due to natural causes.  Now I am the first to admit that this is an unusual circumstance. When the gentlemen passed, more than a decade ago, most of us would say that he could be expected to see his 80th birthday. Today, a similar Canadian who is male and twenty years of age could be expected to live to his 82nd year. So why would he need a policy? Well because all of us are different and we are not just averages. Whether, we think we are going to l...