Business Services
We offer tailor-made financial planning services designed to help you grow your business, reduce the amount of taxes you pay, safeguard your assets, and prepare your team for a secure retirement. From buy/sell agreement funding and key person coverage to corporately owned critical illness, group benefits, and business succession planning — we cover every angle a Canadian business owner needs.
While we have a keen focus on aiding businesses in the trades, we're equally proficient in delivering exceptional financial services to a diverse range of businesses across various industries. Whatever your needs, Thompson & Pollock Wealth Inc. is here to guide you every step of the way.
What we offer business owners
Each of the strategies below is a tool we use regularly with incorporated business owners across Ontario and New Brunswick. The right combination depends on your ownership structure, your partners, your tax position and what you want the business to do for you and your family in the long run.
- 01
Buy/Sell Agreement Insurance
A buy/sell agreement funded by life insurance is the single most important document most multi-owner businesses never get around to putting in place. If a partner dies, becomes disabled, or exits the business, the surviving owners receive a tax-efficient lump sum that lets them buy out that partner's shares — at a pre-agreed valuation — without having to remortgage their homes, drain the company's working capital, or end up in business with a grieving spouse who never wanted to be an owner. We coordinate with your accountant and corporate lawyer to structure the agreement (criss-cross, promissory note, or share redemption), determine the right amount of coverage, and place corporately owned life insurance that funds the obligation cleanly through the Capital Dividend Account.
- 02
Key Person Insurance
Almost every business has one or two people the company simply cannot afford to lose — a founder, a top producer, a master tradesperson, a key estimator, a CFO who knows where every dollar is. Key person insurance is corporately owned coverage on that individual, with the company as the beneficiary. If the unthinkable happens, the business receives a tax-free death benefit (and, with critical illness or disability riders, a living benefit) to recruit and train a replacement, retire debt, reassure the bank, retain nervous customers, and keep payroll moving while the owners figure out what comes next. We help you identify who your key people actually are, quantify what they're worth to the business, and put coverage in place quickly.
- 03
Corporately Owned Critical Illness Insurance
One of the most overlooked planning tools available to incorporated business owners. The corporation owns and pays for the critical illness policy with after-tax corporate dollars (typically taxed at a much lower rate than personal income), and on diagnosis of a covered illness — heart attack, stroke, cancer, and many more — pays a tax-free lump sum benefit. Pair it with a Return of Premium rider and, if no claim is made, the corporation can recover 100% of the premiums paid — creating a powerful sinking fund that protects the owner personally while moving money out of the company tax-efficiently. We build these structures regularly for trades businesses, professional corporations and family-run companies across Ontario and New Brunswick.
- 04
Corporate Owned Life Insurance (COLI)
Permanent corporate life insurance is one of the most tax-efficient ways to grow surplus capital trapped inside an operating company or holding company. Cash value compounds on a tax-deferred basis, the death benefit flows out through the Capital Dividend Account to your estate or beneficiaries tax-free, and the policy can be used as collateral for tax-free policy loans during your lifetime. We use COLI to fund buy/sell agreements, build estate liquidity, equalize inheritances among children inside and outside the business, and turn passive corporate surplus into a tax-advantaged legacy.
- 05
Business Overhead Expense Insurance
If you are personally disabled, your personal disability policy replaces your income — but it does not keep the lights on at the shop. Business Overhead Expense insurance reimburses the company for fixed monthly expenses (rent, utilities, lease payments, staff salaries, insurance premiums, professional fees) while you recover, so the business is still standing when you come back. Critical for owner-operators, professional practices, and contracting businesses that depend on the principal being on the tools.
- 06
Group Benefits
A well-designed group benefits plan — health, dental, vision, paramedical, EAP, optional life and critical illness — does two jobs at once: it takes care of your team and their families when they need it most, and it materially improves your ability to attract and retain skilled people in a tight labour market. We shop the major Canadian carriers on your behalf, design the plan around your workforce and budget, and review it every renewal so you are never quietly absorbing double-digit premium increases year after year.
- 07
Group Pensions & Group RRSPs
Today's best employees expect more than a paycheque. A Group Retirement Savings Plan (Group RRSP, DPSP, or Pooled Registered Pension Plan) lets your team save for retirement through convenient payroll deduction, often with an employer match — a benefit they would have to earn 1.5× to 2× as much salary to replicate on their own. The plans are professionally managed, low-cost, and deductible to the company. Done right, they are one of the highest-leverage retention tools a small or mid-sized business has.
- 08
Business Succession & Estate Planning
The vast majority of business owners plan to fund their retirement by 'selling the business one day' — and the vast majority of those sales never happen on the timeline or for the value the owner expected. We help you build a real succession plan: defining what the business is worth, who can or should buy it (family, management, third party), how the sale will be financed, how to structure the transaction for maximum after-tax proceeds (Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption, family trusts, estate freeze), and what your personal financial life looks like the day after closing.
- 09
Business Insurance — Liability & Property
Commercial general liability, property, tools and equipment, builder's risk, commercial auto, fleet, cyber, and contractor-specific coverages. We work with trusted P&C partners so the protection on the business side of your balance sheet is just as well-thought-through as the protection on the personal side.
How we work with your accountant and lawyer
Most of what we do for business owners sits at the intersection of insurance, investments, tax and corporate law. We routinely coordinate directly with your CPA and corporate counsel — drafting and updating buy/sell agreements, structuring shareholder agreements, modelling estate freezes, designing capital dividend account strategies, and making sure the policies, the corporate structure and the wills all line up. Nothing falls between the cracks because nobody is talking to anybody else.