Financial Planning for Alberta Incorporated Professionals and Business Owners
Your corporation, your insurance, your investments, and your retirement planning shouldn't run as separate decisions. We bring them together — coordinated with your accountant, designed for your situation, reviewed as your business and your life change.
The Problem We Actually Solve
Most incorporated Alberta professionals end up with their financial life split across specialists who don't talk to each other.
The accountant handles year-end and may flag a few tactical opportunities. The insurance broker sells products one at a time. The investment advisor manages whichever account is sitting in front of them. The lawyer gets called in when something specific needs documenting. Each is genuinely useful inside their lane.
The problem isn't any of those professionals individually. It's that nobody is responsible for the picture above the lanes — for asking how the pieces fit together, where the cracks are, and what's possible if everything is designed to work as one plan.
That's the work we do. Not in place of your accountant, lawyer, or specialists — alongside them. We design the long-term integrated plan. They handle their pieces. The combination delivers materially better outcomes than any of those professionals working in isolation.
Who We Work With
We focus on incorporated professionals and Alberta business owners with stable income and a long-term planning horizon. The clients we work best with tend to fall into a few groups.
Medical and dental professionals. Physicians (family practice, specialists, surgeons), dentists, dental specialists, optometrists, chiropractors, veterinarians. Most of our work with this group involves layered corporate strategies — IPPs for retirement, corporate-owned life insurance for estate efficiency, Health Spending Accounts for family medical costs, disability insurance with own-occupation coverage where it's still available.
Legal and accounting professionals. Lawyers, accountants, paralegals, partners in professional corporations. Similar set of strategies as medical professionals, with more attention to firm-level planning and partner-specific coordination.
Engineers, architects, consultants, and contractors. Anyone running a professional services corporation in technical fields. Often heavy on tax-strategy and IPP work, with banking and cash flow coordination through Manulife One.
Owners of operating businesses. Trades, professional services firms, agency owners, retail operations, manufacturers — businesses where the owner-operator has built or is building meaningful corporate retained earnings. Strategy here usually centres on corporate-personal coordination, succession planning, group benefits if there's a team, and tax-efficient extraction of corporate value over time.
Family-owned businesses. Multi-generational, multi-shareholder, or spousal-employee corporations. Layered planning that addresses how value transfers across the family and across time.
In all of these, what's common is the desire for someone to look at the full picture — not just sell a product or file a return.
How We Work — A Different Operating Model
The way we operate with clients differs from a transactional advisory relationship in a few specific ways.
Written planning. Comprehensive clients receive a written financial plan. Not a sales summary or an illustration printout — an actual plan that documents the recommendations, the assumptions, the rationale, and the structure. Something you can hold, refer to, and review against over time.
Integrated design. When we recommend something, we model how it fits with the rest of the picture. A new corporate-owned policy isn't recommended in isolation; it's modeled against existing assets, expected income, retirement projections, and tax position. The strategy stands on integration, not on the policy.
Coordination with your accountant. This is genuinely different from how most insurance brokers and investment advisors operate. We share planning documents with your accountant. We let them review structures before implementation. When they flag a concern, we listen. The plan only works if both sides are aligned.
Ongoing review. Things change. Tax rules change. Your business changes. Your family changes. The plan we build at age 45 isn't the same plan you need at 55 or 65. Reviews happen on a regular schedule — not just when something needs to be sold.
Honest about fit. If we're not the right team for someone's situation, we say so. There are clients we work well with, and there are clients better served by a different kind of advisor. We'd rather have that conversation upfront than waste anyone's time.
The Strategies We Use Most Often
A short overview of the corporate planning tools we work with regularly. Each links to a more detailed page where we explain the strategy in depth.
Tax-Integrated Strategy
The thread that runs through every other strategy. Designing how insurance, retirement, and corporate compensation interact to reduce lifetime tax cost — not just current-year tax. Coordinated with your accountant on the tax-compliance side. Learn more about tax-integrated strategy →
Health Spending Accounts (HSA)
The most accessible corporate tax tool. Your corporation pays for medical and dental expenses on a tax-deductible basis; the benefit comes to you and your family tax-free. For most incorporated professionals, the savings are meaningful and the structure is simple to set up. Learn more about HSAs →
Individual Pension Plans (IPP)
For incorporated professionals aged 40+ drawing T4 income, IPPs deliver substantially more retirement contribution room than RRSPs — with corporate tax deductibility, past service catch-up, and creditor protection. The contribution differential grows with age. Learn more about IPPs →
Corporate-Owned Life Insurance
Permanent life insurance owned inside your corporation accumulates cash value tax-deferred. At death, most of the death benefit becomes a Capital Dividend Account credit, allowing tax-free distributions to heirs. For long-horizon estate transfer, the after-tax outcome can substantially exceed alternatives. Learn more about Corporate-Owned Life Insurance →
Corporate-Owned Critical Illness with Split-Dollar
A specialized structure where the corporation funds critical illness coverage while you personally fund the return-of-premium rider. If no claim happens, the refund flows back to you tax-free — effectively a tax-efficient way to extract corporate dollars over a multi-decade horizon. Learn more about Corporate-Owned Critical Illness →
Disability Insurance for Professionals
Your ability to earn an income is usually your largest financial asset. Properly structured individual disability insurance — with strong own-occupation language where available, return-of-premium options where appropriate, and coordination with any group coverage — protects that asset. Learn more about Disability Insurance →
Manulife One and Banking Integration
Most incorporated households have meaningful ambient cash flow sitting in low-interest accounts. Manulife One restructures that cash flow against debt, often saving years of mortgage interest without changing income, spending, or savings rates. Learn more about Manulife One →
Group Benefits
For business owners with employees, group benefits are table stakes for hiring and retention. Plan design, ongoing review, and active renewal management make the difference between a plan that fits your team and a plan that quietly stops working. Learn more about Group Benefits →
Investment Planning and IPS Coordination
For corporate retained earnings and personal investment accounts, we work with discretionary portfolio managers and use segregated funds where appropriate. Investment selection coordinates with the broader plan — not as a separate decision. Learn more about Discretionary Portfolio Management →
A Note on Who We're Not For
Honest framing of where we're not the best fit:
You're looking for the cheapest version of any single product. We compare across the market and recommend what fits best, not what costs least. Direct-to-consumer brokers handle low-cost transactional purchases more efficiently.
You don't want long-term planning. Some clients prefer to handle their financial life as a series of disconnected transactions. That's a legitimate choice, but it's not how we work.
Your corporation isn't profitable enough to support layered planning. Many of the strategies we use require stable corporate cash flow. Without it, simpler approaches are usually better.
You're not interested in coordinating with your accountant or other specialists. The integrated planning model only works when the specialists are willing to talk to each other.
If any of those describe your situation honestly, we're probably not the right fit — and we'd rather have that conversation upfront.
How to Get Started
The first step is a 30-minute conversation. We'll learn about your situation, what's prompted you to look for advice, and what you're trying to accomplish. We'll explain how we work and what we'd recommend as next steps. There's no pitch and no commitment — most first conversations end with one of three outcomes:
We're a fit. We outline what working together would look like, agree on next steps, and start building the plan.
We're not a fit. We tell you that honestly, and where we can, we'll suggest a direction or a specialist that fits better.
The timing isn't right. Sometimes the answer is "stay in touch and circle back when [specific change] happens." That's normal.
We're financial planners, insurance brokers, and independent advisors — but mostly we're people you can have a straight conversation with about money. Most first conversations take 30-45 minutes. By video, or in person if you're in the Edmonton area.