My Personal Finance Blog

While Canada’s life and health insurance industry employs more than 110,000 people, only around half of them work in the independent channel and are not directly employed by captive insurance companies. After being involved in the life insurance market for 14 years it really felt that I could help other people with their financial situation bette and push my own career further as an independent broker. Recently I’ve noticed that many other professionals were asking me about my motivation to do so and what were the specifics that led me start my own company. Here they are:

Being able to recommend even better products – After so many years of knowledge, I wanted to create my own portfolio and build my own structure of services. I wanted to create something that would be more attractive for my clients and ensure that both of us can get out the maximum of the win-win situation. Having a deeper understanding of the insurance industry – Although I gained a very substantial amount of knowledge from the previous years, starting your own brokerage company is a whole different endeavour. The sheer fact of learning more than ever about my chosen career field was exciting to me right from the start Commissions – Naturally, when you deal with the insurance companies directly, you get better commissions and have access to a larger palette of products. Oppurtinity for growth – Being a captive agent limits your choices and opportunities – however as an independent broker, there are no limits. Competitive edge – The fact that I can set new standards creates oppurtinity for being one of the top. My credo was always shooting for being the very best and with my own company we are able to approach our goal without extra hurdles. Financial flexibility – With your own budget, you can plan for the future better. For example, I have always spent a significant amount of money on promotional items and advertising in general, but with my own company now, we can target our promotional budgets even more effectively. Creating your own team – It is very important to surround yourself with positive people and motivate each other to be more successful. I was very lucky to find people that are not just reliable professionals, but also excellent team players. They are able to bring a lot of fresh, creative energy to our workplace and ensure that our clients get more for the money. With a strong team, you can get more done. It’s more fun, too. Opportinity for better organizing – The independent channel allows you create your own systems. With my team, we’ve introduced a workflow and process that allows us to focus more on dealing with people, yet provide the most service. Motivation – After I started LSM Insurance Services, it felt like driving the same car with a new set of wheels and a great deal of tuning. I’ve become excited about life insurance more than ever and it affected all the areas of my life in a very positive way. If you’ve been this long in the business, a change like this is very vital. Authority – Now as the head of an independent brokerage business, I get invited to speak at numerous events and get a lot more coverage in the media. Not only does this brings us more coverage and new leads, but also allows me to connect with othersuccessful professionals. We can learn from each other and get fresh new ideas that result in an immediate increase in productivity.


As the last words, there is still something that needs to be said. Along with all the fun, there is even more work and responsibility as an independent broker. Be sure you are ready before you make the move.

The world of politics is never supposed to make any real sense. After all, once you pit people’s cherished beliefs against each other, passions are roused and the arguments soon become bitter. It would be better if everyone was just allowed to do what they wanted. But, when it comes to organising medical care for the population, it takes a government to put the right kind of infrastructure in place. People have to be trained as care givers. This takes years and costs a small fortune. Hospitals and clinics have to be built. And then we come to all the support staff who drive the ambulances, keep the places clean and keep the accounts. Ah, yes, the money. All of this work over years has to be paid for. So the $64,000 question is who should foot the bill? It’s at this point that emotions get in the way of common sense.

Talk to one side of the argument and they will tell you people who want access to medical care should carry private insurance. Talk to the other side and they will tell you the state should pay for the service out of the tax revenue. It’s never really clear why people disagree. Only people who are in work pay tax. Only people who earn can afford to pay the premiums on insurance. It’s the same money. The only difference is the way it’s collected – one as tax and the other as premiums paid to an insurance company. But wait! There is a difference! If the state collects in the money, it can use it more efficiently because, unlike the insurance industry, it does not intend to make a profit. So the only reason to support the current system is to allow the insurance industry to continue making an ever larger profit.

As the Senate is currently set up, forty-one senators can stop any reform. That’s forty Republicans plus one other. Yet when you look at the number of people these Republican senators represent, it’s only 36% of the US population. This is somewhat unfair. The party with the majority of representatives was voted in by 64% of the population. The Democratic platform could not have been more clear. It was to be reform of healthcare provision. Yet when you look at the media (which is controlled by big business), all you see reported is the opposition to reform. The “tea party” movement captures all the headlines. But in all this, there is one really big irony that gets very little coverage.

The Republican senators may only represent 36% of the population, but they represent nearly 50% of the children without any health insurance and 42% of the adult population with no insurance. Despite the fact that half the uninsured children in the US are represented by the Republicans, their opposition to any reform that would give the children coverage could not be more aggressive. If we assume the outcome of the reform would be cheap health insurance for almost all US citizens, the Republicans are against it. Their policy is to keep the profits rolling in for the health insurance industry and, if the majority of the people who live in their states have no insurance, that’s just their bad luck. The US is genuinely a strange place. Despite the recession, it’s one of the richest countries in the world yet it has a political party determined to prevent its citizens from enjoying cheap health insurance. Sadly this party with the minority of votes in the Senate could get their way.

Health insurance has become one of the largest monthly expenses for the vast majority of Americans. Not only has it become quite expensive, but for many, health insurance isn’t even available because they simply don’t make enough money to fit health insurance into the budget. This has left hundreds of thousands of Americans without adequate health coverage, including many children. For these reasons, health insurance has also become one of the biggest concerns for most people in the coming elections. So, why has health insurance become so expensive?

The first thing you need to understand about health insurance companies is that they are businesses whose sole interest is to make money by providing a service. In order to make money, these companies must turn a profit by bringing in more money than they spend. In today’s regulatory environment, along with the increased number of lawsuits related to health care, the cost of doing business in the health insurance industry has skyrocketed. These companies, in turn, have had to raise rates to accommodate those additional costs in order to keep making a profit.

That’s not to say that health insurance companies are completely honest with you about just how much health insurance is going to cost you. Most health insurance companies quote premiums based on age. You’ve seen the television ads that offer health insurance for a mere $129 per month for a 29 year old non-smoker. While that sounds like a very reasonable rate, there is more to this than meets the eye.

In order to get the rest of the story, so to speak, you’d need to look at the actual policy and the so-called “fine print.” In order to qualify for that low $129 rate, you’d have to be a perfectly healthy person whose never gotten sick in the past and have absolutely no reason to need health insurance in the first place. In short, they can offer this rate because there is little to no risk that the company will have to pay out any kind of benefit to this person.

Another thing you might not notice from just watching the advertisement is the size of the deductible. For the rate mentioned above, the deductible is likely to be somewhere around $1000. For other policies, the deductible can be as high as $5000.

So, what is a deductible, you might ask? The deductible in an insurance policy is the amount of money you must pay out of pocket before the insurance company will start paying out benefits. Usually, the deductible does not apply to all health care expenses, so you have to pay careful attention as to whether the policy is worthwhile in your particular situation. In some cases, you would spend less money just paying for health care services out-of-pocket than actually purchasing health insurance because of the deductible.

Another thing that might raise the price of insurance coverage is a pre-existing condition. This is any condition that existed before you purchase coverage with any specific health insurance company. In many cases, you may not be able to get coverage for that condition at all, unless you can prove that you have had continuous care for that condition during the time in which you had no insurance. Even if it is covered, you can be assured that it will cost you more money for it.

Because of all of these variables, most people wind up with far higher premiums than those low rates advertised on TV. In some cases, people may not even be able to get insurance at any price, due to the perceived risk to the insurance company. In many cases, the resultant premium is just simply too high to fit into an individual’s budget, and so they continue on without health coverage.

High insurance premiums are a fact of life in these times, and are likely to remain so for a long time to come. The only way to change this is to fundamentally change the approach to providing health care in this country, by socializing the health care system. This, however, comes with its own set of problems that can be worse than the current system in many respect. The bottom line is that there are no easy answers to solving the health care problems in this country. The only thing you can do is to be aware of all the issues surrounding the problem and make your decision based on facts, and not what the talking heads on television are trying to tell you.