Your Insurance Was Right When You Set It Up. That Doesn't Mean It Still Is.

Insurance doesn't expire the way a lease does. There's no obvious moment where it stops fitting.

Premiums get paid. Policies renew. Life changes. And the coverage that was perfectly structured five years ago quietly becomes misaligned with the plan it was supposed to protect.

This is one of the most common and most expensive gaps in a business owner's financial plan. Not bad insurance. Outdated insurance.

What changes and why it matters.

Your corporate structure evolves. You add a Holdco. You bring on a partner. You acquire a property inside the corporation. Each of those changes affects your exposure and potentially which entity should own which policy, how the death benefit flows, and whether the coverage amount still reflects the actual liability.

Your estate gets more complex. A larger RRSP. A cottage with significant appreciation. A shareholder agreement that hasn't been updated. The tax exposure your estate faces at death can change significantly over a decade. If your insurance hasn't been reviewed against that exposure, there's no way to know whether the coverage is addressing it.

Your personal situation changes. Children grow up. A marriage ends. A beneficiary named fifteen years ago may no longer be the right person or may have predeceased you. Beneficiary designations on insurance policies are legally binding. They don't update automatically when life changes.

Your business value grows. Coverage that was appropriate when the business was worth $500,000 looks different when it's worth $3,000,000. Key person exposure grows with the business. Buy-sell funding requirements grow with the business. Coverage that doesn't keep pace creates gaps that only become visible at the worst possible time.

Insurance doesn't tell you when it stops fitting. That's your job or your advisor's.

The review question isn't whether you have insurance. It's whether what you have is still doing the job it was built to do inside a plan that has almost certainly changed since it was set up.

That means looking at coverage amounts, policy ownership, beneficiary designations, and how everything fits against current corporate structure, estate exposure, and personal circumstances. All at the same time.

Not as a product review. As a structural one.

If your insurance hasn't been reviewed alongside your plan in the last two to three years, the review is probably overdue.