By city

Infinite Banking in Port Coquitlam

A contract entered at forty is still running at eighty-five. Almost nobody asks who will operate it if the owner becomes unable to, and that question has a cheap answer if it is asked early.

The city where the rivers meet the rail

Port Coquitlam sits where the Coquitlam River joins the Pitt, hemmed by the dykes and the CP rail yard that gave the city its start in 1913. Downtown runs along Shaughnessy, the Traboulay PoCo Trail loops the whole municipality, and Terry Fox, who grew up here, has the secondary school and the annual run named for him.

A settled, largely owner-occupied city where households tend to stay. Which raises a question the rest of this subject skips: this contract will still be running when you are very old.

The forty-five year contract

This is the page's central point, and it is a practical question rather than a philosophical one.

A policy taken at forty and held to ninety is a forty-five year administrative relationship. Over that period the owner has to make decisions: whether to take a loan and on what terms, whether to change a dividend option, whether to repay, whether a designation still reflects the family. Every presentation describes those choices as advantages. None asks what happens when the owner can no longer make them.

Cognitive decline is ordinary rather than exceptional at the ages this contract runs into. And a policy is a contract the owner alone can operate. A family member cannot phone the insurer and rearrange it, and an insurer that suspects the owner does not understand a request will not act on it.

The document that solves it, and when to sign it

An enduring power of attorney for property, made under British Columbia's Power of Attorney Act, lets a person you choose manage financial matters, including a policy, if you become incapable. The word enduring is the operative one: an ordinary power of attorney ends at incapacity, which is precisely when it would be needed.

The requirement people miss is that it must be made while you still have capacity. It cannot be created afterwards. Once capacity is gone the family's only route is an application to court for committeeship, which is slow, costly and public, and during it nobody can operate the policy. Premiums still fall due while that is happening.

Practical points worth raising with a lawyer, since the document is theirs to draft. Name an alternate, because a sole attorney can predecease you or decline. Say explicitly whether the attorney may deal with insurance, since general wording is sometimes read narrowly by insurers. And give a copy to the insurer in advance rather than at the moment of crisis.

Two smaller things that cost nothing

Tell someone the policy exists. Unclaimed policies are a real category, and a death benefit nobody knows about is not much use to a family. Keep the insurer's name and the policy number somewhere findable, with the will.

And review the beneficiary designation every decade. A policy pays the named beneficiary, and a will does not override a valid designation. A designation made at forty may name someone who is no longer in the picture at eighty.

British Columbia rules and where it does not fit

Insurance in British Columbia is regulated by the Insurance Council of British Columbia, and a professional here holds a Life Insurance Agent licence. Verify it in the Council's public register and ask how the person is paid. British Columbia has no title protection statute of the kind Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick have enacted.

Cash surrender value stays below cumulative premiums for many years, commonly more than a decade, so an early exit is a loss. Dividends are not guaranteed: they are declared annually by the insurer's board based on the participating account's experience, and the scale can be revised downward. Nothing on this page is advice, and nothing on it is legal advice about powers of attorney or incapacity. No assessment has been made of anyone reading it, and the author is not a neutral party: he is licensed to sell the contracts this strategy uses and is paid a commission when one is placed. Ask any practitioner what happens to the contract if you cannot manage it. It is a fair question at any age.