Insurance brokerage bookkeeping in Ontario

In Ontario, general insurance brokers are licensed and regulated by the Registered Insurance Brokers of Ontario (RIBO). RIBO sits alongside the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA), which oversees insurers and agents — but for a brokerage, RIBO is the body that governs how you hold client money and report your finances. That division matters because your bookkeeping has to answer to RIBO's expectations specifically, not to a generic standard.

RIBO's framework leans heavily on the principal broker. The principal broker carries responsibility for the brokerage's compliance, including how premium trust is handled and how financial information is prepared and filed. From a bookkeeping standpoint, that means the trust reconciliation, the trust position, and the supporting records need to be in a state where the principal broker can stand behind them at any time — not reconstructed at filing season. As a bookkeeper for insurance brokers in Ontario, that readiness is what we build toward.

RIBO also expects brokerages to report financial information periodically, and to keep their trust account reconciled so the brokerage can show that trust covers what it owes. We deliberately don't quote specific thresholds, deadlines, or reconciliation frequencies here — those are set by RIBO, they can change, and they're exactly the kind of detail you should confirm directly with RIBO rather than take from a third-party summary. What we commit to is keeping your premium trust reconciled monthly and your books in a position where meeting RIBO's requirements is a report, not a scramble.