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CANFIN
Joshua Bacchus, CPA, CFP®, CLU®
Joshua Bacchus, CPA, CFP®, CLU®
Financial Advisor

Business Solutions At CANFIN we have business solutions to meet many of the complex needs as noted on this page. Please book a meeting with me to discuss how we can lessen your business risk, fund buy-sell agreements, help with succession planning or establish an employee benefit and retirement plan.

Business Solutions

Financial products and services can address specific needs in your financial security plan and help you build a successful business. I have access to a broad range of insurance, investment, employee disability and group benefit products to help meet your individual and business needs and goals. You may have put all your focus and hard work into your business, so it makes sense to protect it properly against the risks that can bring financial hardship.

How to Protect Your Business

We offer unique planning solutions using:

  • Life insurance
  • Disability insurance
  • Critical illness insurance

How to Protect Your Employees

The people employed in your business or organization help you succeed regardless of whether you depend on three key employees, or a team of 100.

We can offer your firm a comprehensive group benefit plan that enables you to retain your important staff:

  • Benefits plans for small business
  • Health-care and dental-care benefits
  • Wellness and disability benefits
  • Life and accidental death and dismemberment benefits

Your Key Persons

When a founding owner desires to retire within 10 or 15 years, Succession Planning may be necessary today. We can help you plan to sell, or to pass the company on to the children or another key-person successor while reducing capital gains taxation.

Key business leaders can assure that they are covered with both disability insurance to replace income, and life insurance to meet capital needs and cover liabilities such as company debt. With proper planning, insurance allows you to hire another key leader in the event of a disability, critical illness, or death for the short or long term.

Where ownership is involved, buy-sell agreements backed by life and disability insurance are essential for fair transitions when an important individual's shares need to be redeemed. We specialize in helping your business protect its future.

Reduce Business Risk

Start-up firms and smaller companies are especially vulnerable to potentially devastating financial risk because they often lack big company sophistication and in-house risk-control expertise. We will help you gain control of your financial risk.

Life Insurance. We help business leaders provide appropriate life insurance to pay off debts and/or the mortgage, educate the kids, and/or provide income for a spouse or a disabled dependent.

Business Disability Insurance. We will examine your need for income replacement insurance that can help replace your paycheque in case you get hurt or sick.

Key Person Insurance. We will assess your need for an insurance policy designed (the policy hires?) to hire the right person if a key individual becomes sick or dies.

Critical Illness Insurance. If a business owner develops cancer, has a heart attack, or a stroke, the illness can wipe out a small business. We have many plans to protect you from such concerns.

Buy-Sell Agreements

Whether you own a partnership or corporation, we can help you set up a buy-sell agreement while you are alive and capable of doing so to protect your partners from liability and generate cash to fund the agreements using life insurance.

We will help you value your company and set up the right Buy-Sell Agreement to meet Canada Revenue Agency's (CRA) standards.

We can determine if the company has the cash flow or a large amount of money available to fund the buy-out of the deceased or disabled owner. If not, permanent life insurance can be used to fund a buy-sell agreement as it can pay a large amount of tax-free capital at the right time (at the decease or disability of the business owner).

After the agreement is drafted, all parties will review it to their satisfaction, and then sign it to make it legal. It is suggested that the life insurance be purchased first to ensure that one is insurable. Even where there is a medical problem, in most cases, there is an insurer willing to design a policy to suit the risk, based on the health of the respective individual.

Group Benefit Coverage

Group Insurance is an insurance plan that protects a group of people's financial security in one or more ways, such as offering low-cost life insurance or a dental plan for the self-employed. A group can comprise (or “be composed of”) members of an association, a company's employees, or professionals in a group such as lawyers or doctors. Insurers realize that people belong to the group because of their field of work, occupation or an association. Thus the group is removed from the acquisition of insurance due to a higher than normal health, work, or environmental risk.

Personalized Solutions for your Specific Needs:

Putting our clients first, we seek to get the best plan for each sponsoring group while meeting their unique objectives. As brokers, we represent a wide selection of the top insurers. Group benefit plans are designed with the membership of the group in mind. We assess the needs closely to unify with an insurer with the most suitable coverage and price.

Group insurance plans can include a combination of coverages, including:

  • Group Life Insurance offers financial assistance in the event of the plan member's death. A Group Dependent Life Insurance plan pays out a lump-sum benefit to a beneficiary in the event of the death of a plan member's spouse or dependent children.
  • Group Short-Term Disability (STD) or Weekly Indemnity is a benefit that compensates an employee for income lost due to a short absence from work due to an accident or sickness.
  • Group Long-Term Disability (LTD) coverage provides an income to a disabled employee unable to perform the duties of his or her own occupation.
  • Group Extended Health Care Benefit supplements medical costs for plan members and dependents otherwise not included by provincial healthcare.
  • Group Dental Care covers varying dental services and/or supplies for plan members and their eligible dependents.
  • Employee Assistance Plan is a professional counselling and referral service sponsored by the employer to provide service to employees and their family members.

Other Advanced Plans include:

  • Vision Care pays for routine eye exam and a percentage of eyeglasses and lenses.
  • Critical Illness provides a benefit paid to an employee after surviving an ailment from list of critical illnesses or injury to provide financial assistance while adjusting to any change of lifestyle during recovery.
  • Group Pension Plan is a program maintained by an employer, an employee organization, or both to fund retirement income to employees or defer income for periods that extend to or beyond employment termination.
  • Health Care Spending Account (HCSA or HSA) is an individual employee account that reimburses eligible health care expenses or other benefits not covered by provincial health insurance. This offers a tax-effective way to offer health and dental benefit choices for self-service to plan members.
  • Administrative Services Only Program (ASO) enables large employers to self-insure health insurance, dental care and short-term disability insurance benefits by supplying administrative functions for their health care claims processing with methods to contain costs.

This information is intended to general educative reference only. This group material is not a specific piece of advice for any one situation as every solution is different.

Group Benefit Consulting

Your Group Benefits program should be as unique as your business. We can deliver specialized expertise and work effectively as an extension of your human resources department. Unlike a generic, off-the-shelf plan, your Group 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 will keep you informed of all the latest group benefit trends and products, and communicate with you in a variety of ways:

  • Open communication with our team
  • Information bulletins to keep you updated
  • Client seminars, scheduled periodically throughout the year

Your Group Benefits Plan

What we offer:

  • We will discuss and analyze key factors that may affect your benefit planning.
  • Our team creates custom group benefit plans: with traditional, flexible benefit designs, or health care spending accounts, based not only on our consultation with you, always revealing the latest industry products that best meet your needs.
  • We help you develop employee handouts and other communications materials.
  • We monitor your benefits program, actively making recommendations, so it continues to serve the needs of your business and reflects the latest industry trends.
  • Each quarter, we complete an assessment of your claims will give 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.
  • We give you options, including the most up-to-date and innovative solutions available internationally—before they become commonplace.
  • At least once a year, we analyze the competitiveness
  • Our in-depth knowledge of the brokering providers and their approaches to underwriting, allows us to negotiate the best possible arrangements for you. In this process we:
  • Analyze carrier proposals
  • Develop a report to make it easier for you to make an informed decision about your provider
  • Schedule presentations by the leading quoting carriers—personal contact between you and the provider is critical to a good working relationship
  • Responding quickly to your questions and concerns
  • Maintaining employee records using the latest pension administration system technology
  • Processing benefits on termination, death, or retirement

This information is intended to general educative reference only. This group material is not a specific piece of advice for any one situation as every solution is different.

Employee Retirement Plans

When your employees retire or are approaching retirement, they will need help through this period of change. Professionals are available to educate your employees about all available retirement income vehicles.

We can design your employee retirement plan to incorporate the following:

  • Analysis of available investment vehicles and associated yields
  • Investment tracking and reinvestment alternatives
  • Individual financial and investment consulting
  • Establishment and management of individual registered and non-registered retirement savings plans
  • Self-directed RRSPs, group RRSPs, and RESPs

Group Retirement Options

We offer the expertise and services to ease the transition to retirement for your retirees:

  • Retirement consulting
  • Retirement income projections
  • Establishment of retirement income vehicles—RRSPs, RRIFs, LIRAs, LIFs, annuities

Individual Group Investment Products

Whether you are making investment contributions to save for future expenses or retirement, the Group Investment Program allows you to take control of your personal portfolio and achieve your financial goals with peace of mind.

  • Lower investment management fees
  • No front- or back-end sales charges
  • No deferred sales charges (DSCs)
  • No minimum investment
  • Pre-authorized cheque (PAC)
  • Spousal RRSPs
  • Self-directed RRSPs
  • No annual administration fees
  • Consolidated statements

This information is intended to general educative reference only. This group material is not a specific piece of advice for any one situation as every solution is different.

Group RRSP Planning

An employer arranges for the company's employees to make contributions in a group RRSP via payroll deductions. The level of contribution per year is decided by the employee, to be invested as specified by the administrator of the group RRSP account. The Group RRSP is managed according to investment selections, in individual employee accounts. We discuss and analyze key factors that may affect your corporate retirement program.

Instant Tax Savings

With a group plan the contributing employee gains similar benefits to a regular RRSP as contributions can be deducted from the employee's income, thus lowering his or her taxable income. A Group RRSP reduces taxes at source, allowing the employee to have a higher income issued by payroll.

Investment Options

Part of implementing an excellent Group RRSP plan is to have a wide selection of investments available for employees.

Fees

Group RRSP fees can be lessened because of the buying power of a group of investors, translating to better returns for the employee over time.

Administration

It is easy to add employees to a Group RRSP. If the company winds down the plan in the future, or if employees are terminated, they can move their money to their own individual RRSP plans. Conversely, pension rules are more strictly regulated.

Employee Vesting

Once the employee and/or additionally the employer makes contributions to an employee's plan, the ownership then is attributed to the employee.

This information is intended to general educative reference only. This group material is not a specific piece of advice for any one situation as every solution is different.

Group Retirement Service Providers will make sure of the following:

We offer careful analysis of pension and retirement vehicles as our Group Retirement consulting team applies their knowledgeable experience of the financial services industry, including the following areas:

Communicating with Your Employees

We can 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:

  • The plan's pricing according to your needs
  • Investment fund selection and ongoing performance
  • Technological advancements that ease your administrative duties
  • Communication with you and your members

Reviewing Your Program

We will tender your Group Retirement program to several providers to ensure that your arrangement is the best in the industry. A complete analysis of competitive quotes will be presented by potential providers.

This information is intended to general educative reference only. This group material is not a specific piece of advice for any one situation as every solution is different.

Business Tax Planning

If you own a business, and your children and/or spouse work therein, consider paying them a reasonable salary from the business. If this is their only income, or they only work part-time elsewhere, they may not need to pay personal income tax if they earn below their personal tax exemption.

If you own a business, pay yourself enough income before the year-end. Focus on allowing for your desired level of RRSP contribution room for the next tax year, perhaps even the maximum.

Keep your tax records for seven years because if you are audited, CRA can back-review your personal income tax returns for up to seven years. Copies of returns, RRSP contribution slips, medical receipts, support for self-employed revenue and receipts, all preparatory source documents, and T-slips may be requested to summarily assess your taxable income. Do your taxes right, and keep the proof. Avoid paying for past income tax, penalties and interest.

Be detailed in your record-keeping regarding your expenses to make sure they are allowed. CRA may investigate whether you have deducted expenses that were for personal use or for business use. So long as you can support these deductions with proper documentation, such as detailed receipts, you'll not create a tax liability

Another advantage is that you will not need to photocopy and send receipts with your tax return. But caution, the downside is that you are more likely to be contacted for a formal review to verify income and expenses not previously articulated by sending a paper return (you may need verification for up to seven years). Discuss this with your accountant.

Capital Cost Allowance

Business owners and some employees may claim capital cost allowance on depreciable business assets such as automobiles, aircraft and musical instruments required to be used in their business or employment. It makes sense to make the purchase prior to December 31 and take the first deduction in the current year versus purchasing early in the next year. Because you can claim the capital cost all year, this allows for a speedier use of the first deduction.

Year-end sensitive tax planning

Year-end tax planning ideas may need to be implemented all year round, because some of the planning may require expenditures on a monthly basis in order to benefit you by year-end.

Disclaimer: A tax and/or legal expert such as an accountant or tax lawyer can help you in special tax areas, and can give you guidance about various topics for which we often can provide a financial product to solve. You should consult a lawyer or accountant to get detailed tax information, especially if you own a business.