Is your advisor licensed to sell insurance?
Insurance
industry advisors are required to be licensed with the insurance regulator in
each province or territory where they do business. License helps protect clients
because insurance regulators will only register firms and individuals if they
are properly qualified. Let’s imagine, you started to work with a person on
your insurance or investments, and everything seems to look good, but something
tells you to double check his or her credibility. How can you do that without
offending the person you work with?
First, you will not offend your advisor if you ask about his or her license status. Insurance advisor’s license status is a publicly available information. The only thing you have to have, is the correct spelling of your advisor’s name.
Second, it is important that your advisor is licensed in the provinces where you are both are. For example, an advisor who is in Saskatchewan works with a client from Ontario must be license in both provinces to be able to sell insurance.
Third, where do I find information about whether my advisor is licensed? Insurance council of every province. You type in Google the insurance council you are interested in, for example “insurance council of Manitoba”, then go to their website and look for “Licensee Directory”. Then the website will ask you to input the name of the advisor, and then wo-la! You can see id the status of your advisor’s license is active or not. Moreover, most councils will also display any “restrictions” to the license.
Links to different councils (if you decide to search me, make sure that you spell my name as Alexsandra)
- BC Council: Licensee Directory (insurancecouncilofbc.com)
- AB Council: Licensing (abcouncil.ab.ca)
- SK Council: Search Licensees (skcouncil.sk.ca)
- MB Council: Agency/Licensee Search (icm.mb.ca)
- ON Council: Licensee Directory (insurancecouncilofbc.com)
Note: the effective date of the license does not tell you the number of years the advisor has had his or her license, the system will only show you the recent renewal date of the license. Most of the licenses are renewed every year, so the directory will show you the start day of the recent renewal.