Welcome to the Wisdom Lifestyle Money Show. I'm your host, Scott Dillingham. Today, I have Paul from Co operators with us. So welcome, Paul.
Paul Lue-Pann:Hi. How are you?
Scott Dillingham:Awesome. How are you doing?
Paul Lue-Pann:I'm good. I'm good.
Scott Dillingham:Good. I'm so glad you could be here and part of the show. I'm curious though before we dive into how your services can benefit investors from the different tiers and products that you have. I'm curious about your life and how you got to be Paul.
Paul Lue-Pann:Wow. So that's a long story. Obviously, I don't know if it's obvious, but I'm Chinese Jamaican. I grew up in Toronto. Worked with Sunlight for about eighteen years.
Paul Lue-Pann:Moved from city to city. So as you climb the corporate ladder, they moved you to different cities and ended up here in beautiful Windsor where the weather is absolutely outstanding. So there's absolutely no complaints. My neighbor is actually a should I mention his name? Sorry.
Paul Lue-Pann:I don't know. Dennis. He's actually my boss. When I was working at Sun Life, in my position as a FCM, he's the same position as cooperators. So we'd always talk about trends and things that are coming down the pipeline, whether it be through MFDA or whether it be through CHLIA or whatever their governing bodies are.
Paul Lue-Pann:So we struck up a pretty good relationship. I told him I got a package and he's like, great. He came to my kitchen table and interviewed me that day. I told him I want to take a couple of years off, spend with family. During, during all the time that you're climbing that corporate ladder, it's, you you sacrifice family time.
Paul Lue-Pann:It's hard work too. Yeah. So so I took about a year, year and a half off and did house projects, you know, missed her mom, cooked the meals. The the best part was calling my wife and saying, what do you want for dinner, honey? And, and she loved it.
Paul Lue-Pann:She absolutely loved it and the kids loved it. And, and then it just got to that time I was like, okay, know, Dennis, let's let's go to the offer. And and now I'm with Co operators. And the I think the reason why I really like Co operators is it's such a multifaceted company. We can do everything from home, auto, life, health, wealth, disability, commercial.
Paul Lue-Pann:You know, working with you, Scott, and looking at your sort of outreach within the community, I think that this could be a good working relationship where we can help your clients in every facet.
Scott Dillingham:That's why we're here. And the other thing too, full disclosure, I have my insurance through you guys. Right?
Paul Lue-Pann:So Are we allowed to say that? Yeah.
Scott Dillingham:And yes. Are allowed to say this.
Paul Lue-Pann:Fantastic client, by the way.
Scott Dillingham:I do. And I also have the life insurance with you guys. I know you off have a bundle package where you can get greater discounts the more you have kind of thing.
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah. Absolutely.
Scott Dillingham:So I was able to take advantage of that, which was really cool. Yeah. Our show is predominantly listened to by investors or homeowners interested in mortgages or money, that type of thing. So let's touch on the different because you said you're multifaceted. Right?
Scott Dillingham:So let's touch on some of the topics and coverages and things that you guys can do. And then in future episodes, we'll, like, really dive deep and really outline it for investors. Perfect. And I will preface this by saying one of the cool things in how I was introduced to cooperators was my last home and auto insurance company. They had a limit on how many properties I could own.
Scott Dillingham:So what happened is I hit that limit and then they're like we can't help you anymore. So I actually had to get another company. I wasn't going to just switch for that new house I was buying because then you lose all the discounts. Right? You get the discounts by bundling.
Scott Dillingham:So then it was cooperators and and so you guys just kept me going and going. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. But, yeah, where do you like to start? Would you like to talk about the home and auto, the investments? Like, where would you like to go?
Paul Lue-Pann:If it's okay with you, I wanna talk about my team. Sure. I think it's important when you're working with with any kind of vendor that you have a strong team, strong a strong unity, strong culture. We're very people oriented. It's not about the numbers.
Paul Lue-Pann:And I think one of the biggest things when you're looking for an adviser or a team for whatever financial endeavors you're looking for, it's important that there's there's continuity. There's more family. It's with us, I I don't really care if you spend a lot or you don't spend a lot. It's my joy of what I do is I get to put you in a better position than you were when you before you met me. You know, whether it be $10 a month, whether it be hundreds of thousands a month, it doesn't matter to me.
Paul Lue-Pann:Like, I enjoy working with people. And my team has pretty well been handpicked since I've been here. And everybody has to have that mentality. My little caption at the end is I'm a phone call away. And I mean that.
Paul Lue-Pann:For all my clients, you can simply call me, whether it be financial advice, mitigating taxes, intergenerational transfer of wealth, business continuity, what whatever the case may be. Like, my job is to be there for you. Now my team, I have a commercial specialist. I have a home and auto specialist. I just hired another person who does what I do in the financial planning, and I already I hired another home and auto person.
Paul Lue-Pann:I've got a lot of training in the next little while, but everybody's here is for service. Like, really, at the end of the day, it's nobody buys cooperators. They buy the people they work with. No one's gonna buy Lens City. They're gonna work with Scott and your team.
Paul Lue-Pann:And I think it's very important that we have the right people in place, and I'm very confident in my team. And I and I think we're here to service the community and whoever needs our services.
Scott Dillingham:That's awesome. No. I love it. That's awesome. So let's talk for investors.
Scott Dillingham:Right? So they're buying home insurance, right? Yep. Real estate investors. So let's touch on home and auto and then we'll touch on some of the investments and the how you can protect your your assets and Absolutely.
Scott Dillingham:And that type of thing.
Paul Lue-Pann:Absolutely.
Scott Dillingham:So can you talk to us what you do? Obviously, auto's auto, but what do you do for homes that's kind of unique for a real estate investor?
Paul Lue-Pann:For homes, again, it doesn't matter how many homes you have with us. You can write as many homes as you want. So if you're an investor with a large portfolio and you wanna deal with one person Yep. We're the home for you. Like, back in the day, like, ten or twenty years ago, it's always diversified portfolio.
Paul Lue-Pann:Everything in every aspect, whether it be for insurance, whether it be investments, this, that, the other. But now people are really liking the fact that I can deal with one person. Now the cool thing about us, again, your home, auto, life, commercial, health, wealth, wealth, everything. But now you just simply call our office, and we're gonna know who you are. So if you have several homes and now you're looking to buy a plaza or now you're looking to buy a commercial property or whatever the case may be, it's all done in one house.
Paul Lue-Pann:We have all your information. So at that point, the more that you're adding to your portfolio, the easier it is for us actually, which is funny because all your information's here, oh, we're adding this to an existing client. And I think that's important, and you you will feel that sense of, hey, listen, it's very simple to get ahold of what I need to get ahold of. I've dealt with investors as well, and and the one thing about investors is when you want information, you want it immediately. You wanna know.
Paul Lue-Pann:You don't wanna hear somebody say, okay. I'll call you next week. It's not the way we work. We're all based on service, and our services, our reputation that helped us grow to where we are today.
Scott Dillingham:The other thing too that's super cool, and I'll share it from my experience because I got this. So you guys offer I think the standard is 2,000,000 liability per property. Is that
Paul Lue-Pann:Pretty standard. Yeah. And I know we're
Scott Dillingham:not getting into the nitty gritty here, but just to give an investor an example. So a lot of investors are fearful of being sued. Right? What if a tenant trips and falls and there's liability issues?
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah.
Scott Dillingham:So you guys have that good liability, but what you also have that I love that I got from my whole portfolio is a 5,000,000 umbrella on top of what the property has. So then technically speaking, I have 7,000,000 Correct. Per property. Not all collectively at the same time, of course. If there was a liability claim here or there, I'd have up to 7,000,000, which is super impressive because a lot of investors, they don't even know about that umbrella product.
Scott Dillingham:So I think that's super
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah. I think it's again, anybody with a portfolio with multiple properties or whatever the situation, the umbrella is just that added extra safety. Just it takes one accident. It takes one thing for this to be activated in the sense of, oh my god, I don't have enough. Now you're liquefying assets or doing whatever if something should happen.
Paul Lue-Pann:We wanna make sure all our clients are taken care of and taken care of to the best of our ability and best within industry standards, of course.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. No. I love it. That's awesome. Now a lot of clients, investors buying these properties, the lenders want them to get it's not mandatory, but we have to ask the client.
Scott Dillingham:So it's mandatory that we ask the client if they want, like, a life insurance to protect the mortgage. Yep. Now I know a lot of investors say, I'll speak to a professional about this. Can you talk about how your products might differ than the mortgage insurance they could get from us?
Paul Lue-Pann:Absolutely. I just wanna make sure we have enough time because I get really excited about this kind of stuff. Okay. Anytime you have an opportunity to to better position a client, we take that. When you look at creditor protection, there's a couple issues of creditor protection, and I think this is where you're going.
Paul Lue-Pann:As your mortgage value decreases, so does your protection. Now we believe if you're gonna pay for a certain amount of benefit, you should get it. So that's where life insurance comes in. So to give you a quick example, I'm okay with time. I'm probably gonna talk a lot.
Paul Lue-Pann:With a quick example, so let's say you're paying $100 a month for just a small policy Yep. For a mortgage property. Now, that property is worth, say, dollars 400,000. Now, over time, it's gonna drop to $200,000 You're still paying $100 a month, but now your benefit is half. So something should happen at that point.
Paul Lue-Pann:The benefit that's paid out or to the mortgage company is $200,000 Yeah. Problem is you're paying for $400,000 So instead of using creditor protection, you use a life insurance policy.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:Because if I'm using a life insurance policy for $400,000 and I have it's a $100 a month, you can have 10¢ on the mortgage. It doesn't matter. You're still gonna get paid $400,000. Okay. From that point as a financial adviser, I can help you look at mitigating taxes, different solutions, whatever the case may be.
Paul Lue-Pann:But really, at the end of the day, here's a check, Scott. It's yours. You do what I'm you wanna not writing that check to make that clear. This is recorded.
Scott Dillingham:I tried. I tried. Because I knew it was recorded, I was like, are you gonna try this?
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah. I've been really here's here's an added feature that a lot of people don't know. When you're investing in properties and you're getting credit protection, you think, I got an investment. I should protect it. But here's a better way of doing it.
Paul Lue-Pann:Now think about that $400,000 that you get. You can use that money for another property. Yeah. So let's do business continuity. Let's look at ways of filtering business to make sure that there is no interruption.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. No. I agree, which is an awesome product. So I do think a lot of clients who state so this is the one thing that I find. They state that, oh, I'm gonna talk to my adviser about this insurance, and they never end up doing it.
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah.
Scott Dillingham:And then a life event happens, and they wish they did. So for anybody listening to this right now, please, if your intention is to get yourself this protection for you and your family, I would just do it. Just do it now. Don't delay. Yes.
Scott Dillingham:Give him a call. And we'll share his phone number, your phone number at the Okay. End So we touched on umbrellas for investors. We talked about the protection. I know you guys do a lot of commercial stuff as well.
Scott Dillingham:Yeah. Can we touch on that?
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah. Absolutely. We have a commercial team. Okay. With cooperators, we have a specific appetite that we like, but it's expanding and expanding.
Paul Lue-Pann:Yep. Typically, I can give you a quick one. We had a person who bought a building, large building, a four for old Ford building, but had no real plans to do anything with it. In that sort of case, we have to look at vandalism, squatters, this, that, and other kind of Those those are things that I'd be concerned about. But then we got another one like a tool and die shop.
Paul Lue-Pann:Like, that's, like, automatic. So to kinda give you an idea of a commercial, the thing with commercials, we'll take on any commercial, but I'm also gonna be very truthful. If I think it's gonna be more liability than we can take on as an office, then I'm gonna tell you. My appetite's pretty big, Just saying. But I think it's important that I'm upfront and I give the information properly.
Paul Lue-Pann:Yep. Now, again, we have commercial specialists as well as we have a commercial team dedicated to us. Okay. I think it might be because of my boss, but I have certain privileges that can really help. And I think what helps the most is when it comes time to renewals.
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah. As an example, when you're looking at any kind of commercial or any insurance, like home or commercial, and you look at the renewals, renewals depending on the property could be substantial or whatever the case may be. Now I've been given a little bit of a privilege where I can help augment some of that. So the clients that I do work with, I will always try to put you in the best situation. And financially, when it comes to renewals, it's good.
Paul Lue-Pann:Because when you reach out to get commercial insurance, anybody can give it to you, and they'll say, oh, yeah. Here's a great deal. It's really cheap. Yeah. And the next year is you get slapped.
Paul Lue-Pann:It's like 40% more. And that won't happen with us. Like Okay. We do the proper due diligence as well as I have a little bit of wiggle room. Yeah.
Paul Lue-Pann:A pretty good amount of wiggle room to make sure the renewals are gonna be sustainable all the way through the use of commercial insurance.
Scott Dillingham:Yep. Now for commercial, I don't know if you do this, I'm just asking because I know, I've seen cooperators employees do this. Do you do the site visits? Me personally?
Paul Lue-Pann:No. No? Okay. My team, yes.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:So so there's certain parameters that happen again depending on the commercial property Yep. Where we can do it. So sometimes a client can just go around and take a couple pictures for us. That'd be great. We'll tell you exactly what to take.
Paul Lue-Pann:If you're unavailable, it's like, say, you're international, you're in another country or or whatever the case may absolutely, we'll do it. If if you're just simply busy and you're tied up in meetings, I we do have enough manpower to send people out to do it as well as we have a company. So there's no issues. Our job is to make it simple for everybody.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:It's that simple. If you're just there and you're like, hey. Listen. I can take the picture for you. Awesome.
Paul Lue-Pann:Thank you. Appreciate it. If you're not, we gotcha.
Scott Dillingham:Okay. And then just on commercial before we go on the investment side of things, is there any property types you do not do? Or maybe you can give us some examples of what you do. Multifamily, office space, like bowling alleys, you'll do all that stuff?
Paul Lue-Pann:Yeah. One one just I just learned about, the other day is we won't do, like, swimming pools, like, community centers that way.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:We're big for not for profit. So we actually have a department for not for profit commercial properties.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:Where I think it's okay for me to say this, but I do believe we are the best when it comes to
Scott Dillingham:that. Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:And the reason why I'm president, I don't know exactly how I get a confirmation, but I know we've never lost a deal against not for profit and you, client will come back and say, wow, that's such a big difference from what we have from before.
Scott Dillingham:Nice. Yeah.
Paul Lue-Pann:Which is great. So it carries that confidence. When it comes to nonprofit, I have no problem. But typically, we'll look at everything, like contractors. Contractors can literally be done in minutes.
Scott Dillingham:Okay. Just to
Paul Lue-Pann:give you an idea when you're looking at commercial insurance. And most properties are pretty simple. Okay. And there's also one more thing I just want to add is that when you're a client with us, you get some privileges as well. So if someone was buying a brand new property, there's a lot more due diligence and everything else that goes in it.
Paul Lue-Pann:And if it is a high sort of liability to us, then there's questions about it. But if you're an existing client, you just say, okay, existing client has some properties. Let's just put it through. Okay. And then we can put it through.
Paul Lue-Pann:So there there's there's all some wiggle room. Again, we may not be the 100% best in price, but I can guarantee you my service.
Scott Dillingham:And I can vouch for that personally. That's Yeah. Where my insurance is. So that helps. So cool.
Scott Dillingham:So let's talk about investments. A lot of people, I know this just from working at the bank. Right? They look to the banks and different investment advisers for investments. Quite often, you skip or don't think of your home and auto insurance provider as investments.
Scott Dillingham:But can you touch on sort of the type of investments if a real estate investor is looking to maybe diversify their portfolio into other asset classes?
Paul Lue-Pann:It's it's funny. I think that's one of the biggest thorns on my side is when you meet with a client, they say, oh, I have my investments to the bank. My first question is, what's your adviser's name? Guarantee they won't know it. Because every so often, the investment adviser changes.
Paul Lue-Pann:If you're looking for a home to plan on your investments, if you have specific time horizon or whatever you're looking for, then we're gonna tailor and customize the solution for you.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:So typically things we look for is like time horizon, risk tolerance, all those type of categories to make sure we get the right thing. But I'll be with you because this is my cup of tea. This is where I work. I'm in the financial planning part of my office. I'll be with you from education, and I think education's key.
Paul Lue-Pann:The biggest thing I do with my clients is make sure you have enough education. Don't just give me money because you like me. I've had a lot of people do that. They're like, Paul, I trust yours, yours is a million dollars. Awesome, great, but no, I want you to understand where you are, where you're going, what we're projecting to, and looking at different investment classes, whether it's gonna be managed portfolios or customized solutions, whatever the case may be.
Scott Dillingham:Okay.
Paul Lue-Pann:My my main role, again, is working with investors is business continuity in a generational transfer of wealth. How do we get money from the pot that we build out in a tax efficient way? Advisers out there are easy to take money. Everybody can take money. There's no problem.
Paul Lue-Pann:No one's gonna say no to money. Yeah. The question is, how smart are you when you're actually depleting the funds that you have in retirement? Are we pulling from RRSPs? Are we pulling from TFSAs?
Paul Lue-Pann:Are we pulling from whatever the case may be? And my job is to make sure that we don't pay the government a lot. I can say that. Right? I wanna Sure.
Paul Lue-Pann:I wanna mitigate how much we pay the government. I don't about you guys, but I'm tired of paying the government. But you have to. You have to do what you have to, but there are also smarter ways. Like, can invest through your corp.
Paul Lue-Pann:We can do insurance through your corp. We can do all kinds of things to your corp where you can corporate taxable tax benefits.
Scott Dillingham:No, that's awesome. Cool. No, I'm excited. I'm actually really excited to hear those segments and how we break it down and really talk into these different features and products for the investors that listen to this. So I'm excited.
Scott Dillingham:We do have to wrap up, but thanks for coming, Paul. And for everybody who's listening today, would you be able to share how they could reach out to you if they're looking for some insurance or a quote or just anything at all?
Paul Lue-Pann:You know what? Specifically to you, if you want, my cell number is (519) 980-0708. That's how you get me directly. What I like to do is I like to talk to the clients, give you a a breath of who we are and what we do, and then I allocate and allocate to the team where it'd be, whether it'd be for commercial home and auto, for financial planning, That's me, Evelina is another person on our team. We we work it out to make sure that you get the satisfaction you need.
Scott Dillingham:Awesome. Sounds good. Thanks for coming, Paul.
Paul Lue-Pann:Listen. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having
Scott Dillingham:me. No problem. Take care.
Paul Lue-Pann:Alright. Take care.