Learning Centre

Nine sections. Each has a page at its root that explains what the section covers and links everything inside it, so you can start from a subject rather than from a list.

No page on this site is currently gated. If a page exists, it can be read.

Where to start

If the subject is new to you, start with the arguments against. That is an unusual recommendation for a practice to make, and it is the right one. What the critics say is the fastest route to understanding what this actually is, and a reader who has only seen the case in favour cannot evaluate it.

If you want the contract itself, start with how a participating policy works. That section is the reference layer, and most other pages on the site link back into it.

If you want to know who is writing this, start with the author page, which sets out the licensing, the five dates that get confused in this field, and how the author is paid.

The strategy

Infinite Banking

The approach known as The Infinite Banking Concept®, a term originated by Nelson Nash. This section covers the approach itself: what it requires of the person using it, how a contract is funded, how capital is accessed and repaid, who it suits, who it does not, and where the idea came from. This section covers the strategy layer only. Anything true of the contract regardless of whether a strategy is being run belongs in policy basics instead, which is a boundary applied deliberately so two pages do not answer the same question.

If any page here is difficult to use, the accessibility statement sets out what has been done and how to report a barrier.

The conditions under which this material is published are in the terms and conditions.

How this material may be used is set out in the terms of use.

The products

Whole Life Insurance

Participating whole life, permanent coverage generally, term insurance, universal life and annuities, and how they compare with one another. Comparisons between insurance products live here. Comparisons between insurance and something that is not insurance live in objections, because a versus-alternative page is an argument rather than a description and carries a heavier disclosure.

The contract mechanics

Policy Basics

The reference section. Cash value, surrender value, dividends and how they are declared, paid-up additions, policy loans, the adjusted cost basis, the exempt test, underwriting, beneficiary designation and the personal tax treatment.

If a page elsewhere on this site mentions a mechanism in passing, it links here for the full explanation. That is a rule rather than a habit: one page owns each concept, and the others refer to it.

Retirement

Retirement Planning

How permanent coverage sits alongside registered accounts, what it does not replace, income sequencing, and the specific cases: the real estate investor, the incorporated professional, the business owner.

For most Canadian households, unused registered contribution room is the better home for surplus money and should be used first. This section says so rather than working around it.

Estate

Estate Planning

What happens to capital at death. Deemed disposition, probate, what a beneficiary actually receives and when, estate liquidity, equalisation between children, creditor considerations that vary by province, and transfer between generations.

Provincial variation matters more here than anywhere else on the site, and Quebec differs from the rest of the country in ways that a national summary would obscure.

Business owners

Business Owners

Corporate ownership, the Capital Dividend Account, retained earnings, key person coverage, succession and buy-sell funding, and the professions with specifics of their own.

The corporate analysis is genuinely different rather than the personal case with a company attached. Importing a conclusion reached about a personal contract into a corporate file is a common error and an expensive one.

A definition you need while reading is likely in the glossary, which defines the recurring technical terms in Canadian rather than American form.

The underlying ideas

Money Principles

Opportunity cost, compound growth, capital recovery, liquidity, the cost of waiting, and tax deferral, explained without reference to any product.

These pages exist to be useful to a reader who never buys anything. A section that turned every general financial concept into an argument for a product would be a sales funnel wearing an education label.

The case against

Objections and Risks

Nine arguments made against this approach, each stated at its strongest before being answered, and where an argument holds it is not answered at all. Five are conceded outright, three are partly correct with the limit stated, and one is rejected because it reasons from American tax rules that do not govern a Canadian contract.

The individual pages: the comparison question, which deals with the strongest criticism in the field; is it legitimate; the real costs; risks and failure modes; and what critics get right.

Families

Family Finance

Decisions across a household rather than across a product: education funding, a first home, coverage for children, emergency liquidity, and ownership between parents and grandparents.

Beyond the sections

Three pages sit outside the nine sections because they are not subject matter.

About the practice explains what the practice does, how it is licensed and how it is paid. Becoming a client sets out what actually happens after a first conversation, step by step, including the points at which nothing is decided. Contact has the address, the phone number and the email, with no form standing between you and any of them.

A note on reading order

The sections are listed above in the order they were built rather than the order most readers need them.

A reader with no prior exposure is well served by moving from the case against, to the contract mechanics, to the strategy, and only then to whichever of retirement, estate, business or family matches their situation. Reversing that order, which is how most sites in this field are arranged, produces a reader who is enthusiastic before they are informed.

A reader who already owns a contract usually wants policy basics first, specifically the pages on dividends, cash value and policy loans, because the common question is not whether to buy but what the contract they have is actually doing.

A reader sent here by an advisor should read the case against first, without exception. If the arguments on those pages were not raised in the conversation they had, that absence is itself information.

Why the sections are separated the way they are

The boundaries are not arbitrary and they are worth knowing, because they explain why a subject you expect in one place appears in another.

Form before substance. A question asked adversarially belongs in objections even when the answer is mechanical. "Do policy loans really reduce my death benefit" is a challenge and it is answered where challenges are answered. "How does a policy loan affect the death benefit" is a mechanics question and it is answered in policy basics. Same underlying fact, two reader states, two pages.

Contract before strategy. If a statement remains true for someone who has never heard of the strategy, it belongs with the contract. If it only holds for someone running the strategy, it belongs with the strategy.

Mechanism before audience. A page about who the reader is never becomes the canonical explanation of how something works. The business owners section holds what is specific to a corporation, and links to policy basics for the mechanism itself, rather than repeating it in a slightly different form.

Taxpayer decides tax. Personal tax treatment sits in policy basics. Corporate tax treatment sits in business owners. Treatment at death sits in estate, which is assigned explicitly rather than by rule, because death is the point at which the personal and corporate questions stop being separable and a default would send the page to the wrong section.

Those four rules exist so that one page owns each concept and the others refer to it. The alternative is two pages answering the same question slightly differently, which is how a site of this size becomes its own competitor and how a reader ends up unsure which answer is current.

What is not here

Stated because an index that quietly omits things is not an index.

No projections presented as expectations. Where figures appear, they carry the assumptions behind them and the date they were current.

No client counts, success rates or testimonials with dollar figures. Those are the easiest numbers to publish and the hardest to substantiate.

No calculators yet. Interactive tools that produce figures require insurer and distributor review before publication, and that review has not been completed.

No downloadable guide in exchange for an email address. If a page is worth reading it is on the site.

How to use the sections together

A question usually touches more than one.

Someone asking whether to use capital held in a contract for a property purchase is asking a mechanics question, a strategy question and a comparison question at once. The mechanics page explains what a policy loan is and costs. The strategy section covers how repayment is sequenced. The objections section asks whether the comparison being made is the right one.

Reading only the section that agrees with you produces a confident answer to the wrong question. That is the reason the case against has its own section rather than a paragraph, and the reason this page recommends starting there.