Most retirement advice focuses solely on accumulating enough wealth to support your lifestyle post-career. But what if your retirement plan could do a lot more?

What if it could also:

  • Outlive you
  • Transfer seamlessly to your loved ones
  • Fuel lasting generational wealth
  • Avoid probate altogether

While RRSPs and TFSAs are familiar to most Canadians, few realize that a Personal Pension Plan in Canada can continue to serve your family long after you stop working-and even after you’re gone.

In this article, we explain why the PPP® is more than a retirement plan.

It’s a tax-efficient retirement strategy that helps incorporated professionals build generational wealth and protect it across multiple generations.

PPP®: A Retirement Plan and Wealth-Building Machine

The Personal Pension Plan (PPP®) is a government-registered, combination pension plan in Canada designed for business owners and incorporated professionals. While its core purpose is to deliver retirement income, its structure makes it a long-term corporate retirement plan that does much more.

Key features include:

  • Higher contribution limits than RRSPs, especially as you age
  • Multiple tax-deductible inputs, including:
    • Past service contributions
    • Early retirement-related contributions
    • Investment fee deductions
  • Tax-deferred growth, accelerating wealth accumulation
  • Scales with your career and business success
  • Compounds capital over decades, creating a pool of wealth that can outlive you

The result? A plan that doesn’t stop when you do. It builds a foundation for multi­ generational wealth transfer.

Corporate Structure and Tax Efficiency That Outlasts You

The PPP® is uniquely suited for retirement planning for incorporated professionals.

Because your corporation sponsors it, it creates layers of longer efficiency:

  • Deduction for contributions allows the corporation to create tax income
  • Contributions are fully tax-deductible at the corporate level
  • Investment growth is tax-deferred, maximizing compounding
  • Investment fees can be deducted by the company
  • Unlike RRSPs, fees aren’t paid from after tax personal income

This structure results in higher net returns, less income tax, drag and a powerful mechanism for generational wealth planning, all while supporting your retirement income.

No Probate: PPP® Avoids the Estate Freeze

Unlike many registered plans, the PPP® assets are not part of the deceased’s estate, offering a compliant and efficient probate avoidance strategy, such as income splitting by designating multiple beneficiaries.

Benefits include:

  • No probate fees, executor costs, or delays
  • No forced tax events on death
  • Assets transfer smoothly to a spouse or the next plan member with no tax
  • Wealth stays protected, tax-deferred, and growing

This helps families avoid one of the biggest threats to intergenerational wealth: unnecessary estate erosion.

Multi-Generational Transfer Through Plan Succession

The PPP® is more than a personal retirement vehicle. It’s an engine for multi-generational wealth transfer:

  • Adult children involved in the family business can become plan members
  • The corporation continues making deductible contributions on their behalf
  • There’s no need to set up a new plan
  • Income can be distributed tax-efficiently across family members

In short, the PPP® allows your wealth to continue working for your family.

Creditor Protection Retirement Plan

For professionals in high-risk industries, protecting retirement assets is just as important as growing them.

The PPP® offers:

  • Statutory creditor protection in most Canadian provinces
  • Shielding of funds from lawsuits, bankruptcies, and business liabilities
  • Legal safeguards that go beyond what RRSPs typically provide

This makes the PPP® an ideal creditor protection retirement plan for professionals and entrepreneurs seeking financial resilience in an uncertain world.

Help Your Clients Plan a Legacy, Not Just a Retirement

Most clients plan for retirement. Far fewer think beyond it.

The Personal Pension Plan is one of the few financial tools in Canada that enables both goals, delivering lifetime retirement income and supporting tax-efficient intergenerational wealth transfer.

With built-in advantages like probate avoidance, corporate-level asset protection, and plan succession across generations, the PPP® offers more than tax deferral. It creates long-term continuity for both family and capital.

As an advisor, the question isn’t just: Is this client retirement-ready?

It’s:

Are they also positioned to preserve and transfer wealth efficiently?

If you’re working with incorporated professionals or business owners, the PPP® is most likely the most powerful strategy they’ve never been shown.

Let’s connect and explore how it could support your client’s retirement and their legacy.