Well the IRP is basically a specific way to use a whole life, life insurance policy. You overfund the policy which creates a cash value and that cash value grows over the years. When you retire you borrow money each year against the value and because it's borrowed money there is no tax.
It's not that this is a scam (although I don't have about this Gateway company you mention at all), and this strategy has been around for many years. It probably sounds a lot easier than it is. For example, to do this properly people have to not only have a fair amount of money, they have to want to spend it on insurance. They also have to want to commit that money, essentially for sure, to their retirement and do so years ahead of time. So for a guy who is say 30, they have to put away roughly $1000/month to make the numbers attractive. It's not that it can't be done, but there are only so many people willing.
It's hard to say that this is better than an RRSP or TFSA though. The illustrations may look more attractive, but there are a lot of considerations. Purely compensation wise it's a lot better for the advisor's though!
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