Try to remember the last time your benefits broker called you when it was not renewal season. Not an email blast. An actual call, to look at your plan, because something in your business had changed.
For a lot of Canadian employers, that call is hard to place. Not because the broker is bad at their job, but because the job, as most brokerages have built it, ends when the renewal is signed.
That is worth sitting with, because you are paying for that relationship every single month.
What should a good benefits broker do between renewals? A benefits plan touches hiring, retention, budgets, and your team's health all year. A broker worth their pay should review the plan, flag what has changed, and help you use it, not just re-sign the same coverage once a year. Most of the industry is not built that way. A few brokerages are.
Why do you only hear from your broker at renewal?
Because the traditional model is built around one event a year.
A benefits plan renews annually. The renewal is when the paperwork moves, when the numbers change, and, not by coincidence, when the broker is most visible. The rest of the year, there is little in the standard arrangement that pulls them back to your table.
So the plan you chose two, five, or ten years ago keeps rolling forward, adjusting for price but rarely for fit. Your business grows, your team changes, and the plan mostly stays put.
How does your broker actually get paid?
Here is the part that is almost never explained plainly.
Most benefits brokers in Canada are paid a commission by the insurer, and for a lot of small and mid-sized companies it runs around 10 percent of your total premium, built right into the premium you pay. You never see a separate invoice, so it is easy to assume the advice is free. It is not. You are paying for it inside every monthly bill.
Now follow the incentive. When your premium goes up, the commission built into it goes up too. The person advising you on your costs is compensated in a way that quietly rises alongside those costs. That is not a scandal, and it does not make your broker a villain. It is a structural misalignment, and you deserve to know it is there.
Wait, doesn't your broker have to tell you what they make?
You would think so. In 2018, the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association proposed exactly that: Guideline G19, which would have had insurers disclose the compensation paid to brokers on group benefits and retirement plans.
It did not survive. After pushback from the advisor community, the guideline was withdrawn on May 31, 2019 (Benefits Canada). So today, in Canada, there is no standing rule that obliges your broker to tell you what they are paid on your plan. Many never bring it up.
That gap is exactly where a different kind of brokerage gets to make a choice.
What does a passive relationship cost you over time?
It rarely shows up as one big number. It shows up as drift.
Every year a plan goes un-examined, it fits your team a little less well. Coverage that made sense at 15 employees is wrong at 40. A benefit your people would value goes unadded. A benefit no one uses keeps getting paid for.
And the value you do provide goes unspoken. Most employers never make sure their people can see or explain the plan, so even a good plan often sits half-understood by the people it is meant to keep. You pay for it. They underestimate it. Everyone loses a little.
The cost of doing nothing is real. It just does not show up on a single renewal letter. It shows up when you model it forward.
What does a different kind of brokerage actually do?
It treats the relationship as the product, not the renewal.
That means showing up through the year, not just in renewal season: reviewing the plan against where your business actually is, flagging what has changed, and helping your people understand and use what they have. It means being transparent about compensation in writing, every year, without a rule forcing the issue. And it means running lean, using technology to do quietly in minutes what used to take a junior account manager a week, so the effort saved goes back into advice instead of overhead.
RiskX was built on that model. We disclose our compensation in writing every year. We are the Official Common Wealth advisor, and we bring the planning partner, the governance, and the accountability rather than handing you a binder and disappearing. This is not about being the cheapest option. It is about being a brokerage you can see the inside of, one that is there when you need it.
Why isn't every brokerage built this way?
Because the old model is comfortable and profitable.
If your compensation arrives whether or not you add value between renewals, there is little pressure to change. Being transparent about what you earn invites questions. Being proactive costs time. Running lean means rebuilding how the firm operates. None of that is easy, which is why most firms leave it alone and keep renewing.
The employers who come out ahead are the ones who stop treating their broker as a once-a-year vendor and start expecting a consultant in their corner.
What should you ask your own broker?
You do not have to switch anything to find out where you stand. You need a few direct questions.
When did we last review this plan against where the business is now, not just its price? How are you paid on our account, in dollars, this year? What have you brought to us in the last twelve months that we did not ask for? And if our premium rises next year, does your pay rise with it?
Ask those out loud. The answers, and how comfortably they come, will tell you what kind of brokerage you actually have.
RiskX is a family-owned Canadian group benefits brokerage, over three decades in, that discloses its compensation in writing every year and works as a year-round consultant rather than a renewal-season vendor. If you want a plain-language second look at your plan and how your current broker is paid, we will walk through it with you. Book a call with Gordon Smith, Executive Chairman & Founder: https://ro.am/riskx-founder