Employee Benefits Consultants: directory of firms

There is no single national insurance licence in Canada. Each province and territory licenses the intermediaries who sell and advise on insurance within its borders, and those regulators coordinate through CISRO, a forum of Canadian regulatory authorities working towards consistent qualification and conduct standards for insurance intermediaries.

The list of regulators is long and worth knowing if you employ people in more than one province: the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario and the Registered Insurance Brokers of Ontario in Ontario; the Autorité des marchés financiers and the Chambre de l'assurance in Quebec; the Alberta Insurance Council; the Insurance Council of British Columbia; the Insurance Council of Manitoba; the Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan; the Financial and Consumer Services Commission in New Brunswick; provincial departments in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador; and the territorial governments in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

In Ontario, group benefits sit within the life and accident and sickness licence class, and FSRA sets out the application and maintenance requirements for those agents, including sponsorship by a licensed insurer for a new agent's initial period, continuing education and errors and omissions coverage. Ask which licence the individual holds, in which jurisdictions, and confirm it with that regulator rather than relying on a business card or a website.

Group benefits and group retirement plans are often presented together, but they sit under different regulators, and the boundary matters. Selling and advising on group insurance is licensed insurance activity. Advising on or trading in securities is a separate regulated activity: in Ontario, a firm or individual advising on or trading in securities, or managing investment funds, must be registered under the Ontario Securities Act unless an exemption applies, and registration categories define exactly what a registrant may do.

In practice, a benefits consultant may be licensed for insurance but not registered to advise on securities, or may work alongside a registered colleague or firm for the retirement side. Neither arrangement is a problem, but a consultant blurring the line is. Ask directly which regulator licenses or registers them for each part of what they are proposing, and ask what they are not permitted to advise on.

You can check registration independently. The Canadian Securities Administrators' National Registration Search shows whether a firm or individual is registered, the category of registration, and any terms and conditions attached to it, across Canadian jurisdictions. It takes a few minutes and answers a question marketing material cannot.

Group benefits plans are renewed periodically, and the renewal is a negotiation rather than a notification. The insurer reviews the group's experience and proposes terms; the consultant's job is to test that proposal, explain what is driving it, and advise whether to negotiate, change the plan design or go to market. An employer who treats renewal as an administrative formality is the one most likely to be surprised.

Between renewals, the employer carries real obligations. Enrolments and terminations have to be reported promptly, because late reporting is a frequent cause of denied claims. Employee data has to be kept accurate. Plan documents and booklets need to reflect what was actually purchased, and employees need to be able to find them.

Employee information in a benefits program is sensitive personal information and should be handled accordingly: collected for a stated purpose, limited to what is needed, safeguarded, and shared only with those who need it. Health-related claim details in particular should not be flowing back to managers, and an employer that finds them doing so has a problem to fix regardless of who set the process up.