Michael Salloum

A family practice, and what that means for a household

Michael Salloum is an advisor at Canadian Wealth Creation Centre Inc., the firm that trades as IBC Financial. He joined in 2018 and has worked since then alongside his father, Jose Salloum. That makes this a family practice in the plain working sense of the phrase rather than the decorative one.

The plain sense is the one that matters, because the contracts this practice works with are measured in decades rather than in quarters. A household that begins here is served by the same family for the life of the contract. The person who answers a question about a policy loan in the second year is still there in the fifteenth, and where he is not, the person beside him has read the same file, sat in the same design conversation, and can carry it forward without the household having to tell its own story again from the start.

That is an unremarkable promise to make and a difficult one to keep, which is why it is worth stating in a form a reader can test. Ask who services this contract in ten years. The answer here is a family rather than a name, and it has been the same family since 2018.

What sparked an interest in this approach

Michael has cited a passage from Nelson Nash's book, in which Nash observes that people frequently give lip service to the idea of opportunity cost without applying it to their own decisions.

That observation is the intellectual starting point for most people who come to this subject seriously, and it is a better one than the marketing usually offers. The concept itself, explained without any product attached, is set out on opportunity cost.

Working alongside Jose Salloum

Michael's most significant professional influence has been his father. More than a decade of working side by side transmits the things no course reaches: how a household actually behaves in the third year rather than in the first, which questions have to be asked before a design is settled, and when the honest answer to a request is that it should not be done at all.

It also means the practice has an internal habit of arguing with itself. A file here is discussed by two people who have looked at a great many of them, and the disagreements happen before a recommendation reaches a client rather than after. Two readings of a structure cost the practice time and cost the client nothing.

What Jose Salloum's own record consists of, including the credentials he holds, is set out in full on his page.

What the work involves before a contract is placed

The same sequence is followed for every household, and it is worth setting out because person pages usually describe personality rather than practice.

Establishing what a client is trying to do, before any product conversation. A contract is designed at issue for a purpose, and the design largely cannot be redone afterwards. Most of the value in this work is created in that first conversation, where nothing is being sold and a great deal is being decided.

Assessing suitability, which is a regulatory obligation rather than a sales step, and which is the reason the questions are more numerous rather than fewer. A household that finds the questions thorough is being served properly.

Explaining what is guaranteed and what is not. The policy schedule contains contractual values. Anything above them depends on dividends declared annually at the insurer's discretion. A client who can repeat that distinction back has been taught something durable.

Saying no. A frequent and correct outcome, particularly where cash flow is not durable, where the horizon is short, or where registered contribution room is unused. Turning work away is the least profitable thing a practice does and the clearest signal of how it intends to behave.

What happens after the contract is placed

This is the part of the work that lasts longest and is written about least, which is exactly why it belongs near the top of a page rather than in a footnote.

A policy loan wanted for a closing date. A beneficiary change after a separation. A premium that has to move because a business had a hard year. An annual review that reads the statement against what the contract was actually designed to do, rather than filing it unopened. These arrive when they arrive, and the household on the other end of them is rarely having an easy week.

A contract nobody attends to underperforms its own illustration. Attending to it is ordinary, unglamorous, continuous work, and it is the work that decides whether the design made at issue ever does what it was drawn to do.

It is also the reason this practice keeps its client list at a size two people can genuinely service. A longer list photographs better. A serviced one performs better, and a household finds out which kind it was in year nine rather than in the first month.

Depth in one approach

This practice does one thing. It works with participating whole life contracts used in the way Nelson Nash described, and it declines the work that sits outside that. The certification Michael has held since 2022, the Infinite Banking Concepts® Authorized Practitioner certification from the Nelson Nash Institute, marks completed study of that approach specifically.

Depth of that kind shows itself in small places. In knowing which questions a household will have in year six before it has them. In recognising a design that will strain a cash flow two years out. In being able to explain a dividend scale in words a person can repeat to a spouse afterwards, which is a harder test than explaining it once at a table.

It also sets the standard of question a client is entitled to ask here. Ask how the mechanism works rather than how it feels, and expect an answer that survives being written down. The whole of this website is built on that expectation, and the advisor pages are held to it as firmly as the teaching pages are.

Continuity, and who services a contract in ten years

Not a biographical point, and worth stating because most person pages omit it.

Continuity. A contract of this kind runs for decades. A practice built on one person has a succession problem that eventually becomes the client's problem, whereas a household served here has two people who know the file and a shared record between them. Asking who services a contract in ten years is a fair question, and the answer given here is a family rather than a name.

Availability. Servicing questions arrive when they arrive: a policy loan needed for a closing date, a beneficiary change after a separation, a review that has been deferred twice. Two people answer those at twice the pace one person can, and neither of them has to apologise for being away.

A second reading. Design decisions made at issue cannot be redone later. Two people looking at a structure before it is placed is worth more than either of them reviewing it afterwards, and it is the cheapest quality control available to a practice of this size.

And the limit of that argument. A second advisor does not make an unsuitable recommendation suitable, and it does not substitute for the accountant and the legal advisor a file may need. Those are separate roles, described on the about page.

Arranging a conversation

The process is the same for every advisor at the practice and is set out in full on the discovery meeting page: five steps, none carrying a fee, every meeting online, and you can stop at any one of them without explaining yourself.

The first meeting runs thirty minutes and is mostly listening. What a household is trying to do, what it already has in place, what the next five years look like in cash flow terms. No illustration is produced in that meeting, because an illustration drawn before the purpose is understood is a sales document rather than a design.

If the approach does not fit, that is said in the first meeting rather than the third. It costs nothing to find out, and a practice that intends to be here for the life of a contract has every reason to say so early.