Insurable Interest Canadian Insurance Blog

All the changes that are coming mean your clients will need your guidance more than ever. And weaving through all these issues is the biggest question of all: What will it mean for your clients’ investments? There is substantial debate about how stocks will fare in the Trump administration. Will his tax cuts, and support for drilling, boost productivity — or will his tariffs and mass-deportation policies impede corporate profits? Wall Street analysts disagree, but there’s one topic no one seems bearish about: crypto. Trump has made it clear that he strongly supports crypto, as do a majority of members in the House and Senate — more than 275 of them, by one count. The Biden administration’s effort to prevent crypto companies from doing business in the United States will be immediately halted on Jan. 20 — as will Gary Gensler’s role as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump nominees Paul Atkins (SEC chair), David Sacks (AI and crypto czar) Scott Bessent (Treasury secretary), Howard Lutnick (Commerce secretary) and Kelly Loeffler (Small Business Administration head) are all strong proponents of digital assets, and they are widely expected to foster a regulatory environment that is the exact opposite of...

These ACH payments, the order states, “were typically to pay the FA’s credit card bill or to transfer funds to the FA’s account at an online payment application.” “Safeguarding investor assets is a fundamental duty of every financial services firm, but MSSB’s supervisory and compliance policy failures let its financial advisors make hundreds of unauthorized transfers from their customer and client accounts and put many other such accounts at significant risk of harm,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement in a statement. “However, today’s resolution also takes into account the firm’s several self-reports to, and substantial cooperation with, the Commission staff and its remedial efforts, including compensating the financial advisors’ victims and retaining a compliance consultant to conduct a comprehensive review of the relevant policies and procedures.” In addition, from October 2015 to at least February 2021, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney “failed to implement policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent and detect misappropriation by its FAs using unauthorized cash wire transfers from multiple unrelated customer or client accounts of the same FA to the same third-party external account,” the order states. “Although Morgan Stanley Smith Barney understood such activity was a red flag and...

If the Medicare provisions in the act are repealed, the impact on drug prices could be significant. 5. The underlying cost of drugs is still rising. For 40 years, the cost of health care in retirement has continued to rise between one-and-a-half and two times as fast as the overall Consumer Price Index. The Medicare budget has grown from $7.5 billion in 1970 to more than $1 trillion this year. Although Trump has promised to not cut Social Security or Medicare benefits, the math simply doesn’t work. The Biden administration’s plans to add weight loss drugs to Medicare coverage will increase costs to the program, as would Trump’s proposals to provide coverage for in-home care. The elimination of taxation on Social Security (which Trump announced his support for during his campaign) would reduce revenue. And, if tariffs are applied to all goods produced outside the United States, the cost of imported drugs will rise. Eventually there will have to be changes to these programs if they are to continue in their current form and offer promised benefits. More cost-sharing in the form of reduced benefits, higher deductibles and premiums for clients is inevitable. The further a client is from retirement,...

Innovation isn’t necessarily at the forefront of the concept, which doesn’t push the product to the next level, despite the technological advancements. We wanted to challenge the status quo of what the term life insurance application process should look like and, as a result, truly reimagine what not only we could do for our clients but the larger industry itself. This thought process was driven home through an integration of multiple business units, including IT, distribution, operations and underwriting. When a diverse group of departments come together and ideate, the resulting product can reshape the industry. 3. Don’t be afraid of the moment. Our digitized platform was the first of its kind in the U.S. term life insurance market and was essentially launched during the peak of COVID-19. The industry wasn’t able to operate under normal circumstances during the pandemic, because agents weren’t allowed to visit homes or prioritize getting exams completed. Looking back on it, it was a scary moment to dive head first into but the risk taken of launching a system during the pandemic turned out to be for the better and changed the way that life insurance applications look today. 4. Prioritize consumers and agents. When...

Advisors can also use the tool to sets tax and gains budgets for predetermined thresholds, helping to maximize tax-loss harvesting and gains realization, while supporting tax-minimizing rebalancing at both the account and household levels. According to Choreo, the automated assessment of trade-offs eliminates the need for manual tax considerations and adjustments. “Our team appreciates that tax planning is an integral part of comprehensive wealth management,” Matthew Gotlin, Choreo’s chief investment officer and managing director, said in a statement. “With Choreo Tax Advantage, our financial professionals can maximize efficiency and effectiveness, while their clients gain the opportunity to capture tax savings in an improved manner.” Credit: Adobe Stock