Group Insurance and Private Health Services Plans

Hi, and welcome to Life Guard Insurance. My name is Mitch Reynolds, and this is our first ever podcast for our life insurance weekly update. We will be doing this every week, talking to you about some issues that are current, relevant and on the table to what we are dealing with at Life Guard Insurance.

What I would like to talk to you today about this week is group insurance and Private Health Services Plans. At Life Guard we have partnered with arguable the best Group Insurance provider in Canada and Southern Alberta. The company is called The Benefit Specialists Corp. They are brokers for group insurance and they can access the entire group insurance market to not only find you the best price but build a plan that access different parts of group insurance from different companies. For example, disability insurance from RBC Insurance, health and dental benefits from Manulife and life insurance from Sun Life. By packaging it together into a specialty group insurance plan they can find you the best price.

But price is not everything when it comes to group insurance. You must think about service, ongoing communication, administrative support, and planning usage because premiums change. Group insurance has only a one year guaranteed premium, so your price can change every year. If you have a great deal of usage premiums may go up; i.e. you’ve never had a group insurance plan before and after putting it in place all employees get their teeth done (dental work), you can expect that next year the premiums will go up because the usage of the plan might far exceed the amount of premium collected by the group insurance company. They will ask for more money and it can be steep.

A good group insurance broker, like The Benefit Specialists Corp. will keep you updated throughout the year as to how your group is doing with usage.

Plan administration is also important. If you’ve never had a group insurance plan before or have experience poor administrative support you really want a brokerage company that is going to help you enrol new employees, make sure the benefits they choose are implemented within the 31 day grace period, and get the plan rolling smoothly so that it doesn’t eat up a lot of your company’s administrative time. Our partner, The Benefit Specialists Corp focuses on small to medium sized businesses and takes a lot of the burden off their shoulders.

You can access a great deal of information about designing group insurance plans, contacting us for a quote, etc. through our Group Insurance Link under Educentre. It will take you to our pages on group benefits insurance plans.

Another thing to consider if you area small corporation, like a consulting business or a small team of professionals, is a Private Health Services Plan (PHSP). This is a way of getting tax free health benefits to you. It is a pay as you go plan, also called a Cost Plus plan. By setting up the administration of your PHSP plan through our partner, Beneco (run by the same people as The Benefit Specialists Corp., Paul Hauk and his team) the Private Health Services Plan administration company.

What you are basically doing is putting all your personal health and dental expenses through your corporation, thereby making those expenses a tax deductible expense to the corporation and a tax free benefit to you. So, instead of spending your own money as after tax dollars for your health and dental expenses you run it through your corporation. A tax free cost to you to pay for your medical expenses and a tax deduction for the corporation.

There is extensive information on the website under Private Health Services Plans.

In conclusion, here at Life Guard Insurance we are not the specialists in group benefits insurance or setting up Private Health Services Plans but we have partnered with the best – the best team in Canada and across Alberta (The Benefit Specialists Corp and Beneco). If you need help, you can always contact us or look at the pages on group benefits insurance and Private Health Services Plans. You can request a quote for group insurance also, where you can fill out more information about your company and exactly what you want for your group insurance.

Thanks for listening to our podcast on group insurance and Private Health Services Plans.

Check out our YouTube channel at InsuranceCanada.

Related posts:

1. The Best Group Insurance Advice In Canada
2. What is better: Group Insurance or Individual Coverage?
3. Shopping the Group Insurance Market for the Best Price in Canada
4. Joint Life insurance Plans for Canada Clients