Advocis conference update: Membership drive main focus for new chair

(May 31, 2004) Freshly minted Advocis chair Randy Reynolds wasted no time in identifying his biggest challenge for the next year following the association’s annual general meeting in Calgary late Friday.

“Right now, we represent the only voice for independent-minded financial advisors in Canada, yet we only have 16,000 members, and 16,000 members drive a certain amount of revenue [but] if you have high demands from financial advisors to provide the protection and preparation and goods and services that they require to be successful, that costs money,” said Reynolds, a Vancouver-based financial planner. “My main goal is to increase the membership of Advocis significantly in the next year and hopefully lay a membership drive groundwork for the next chair and the next chair, so that by 2010 we’re a 25,000- to 30,000-member organization.”

Reynolds added that Advocis has a goal of 2,004 new members in 2004, and has identified 30,000 membership prospects within its own database. For outgoing chair Brian Mallard, hitting this year’s membership target comes down to one simple approach.

“The reality is that if every member currently just talked to somebody who’s a non-member, 2,000 [new members] is a ridiculously low target,” noted Mallard. “I challenged the chapter leadership group the other day and I said, ‘just tell their own story once in a while, you’d be amazed how motivational that is and how people will just join.'”

Following the Advocis annual general meeting on Friday, the association announced that its members have confirmed their strategic direction for the 2004-2005 year, choosing to focus on key issues that include elevating professionalism within the financial services industry, advancing the accreditation strategy that was unveiled at last year’s meeting and fighting back against “predatory regulation.”

Beverly Brooks, Advocis’ vice-president of public affairs, allowed that the association has had mixed results in meeting with regulators over the past year to advance initiatives such as getting specific designations identified as a “holding out” requirement for advice giving, but has had more success at the political level.

To illustrate the association’s lobbying powers, Mallard pointed to a campaign run earlier in the year that dealt with the issue of bulk transfers, or an advisor’s ability to take his clients with him when he changes firms. According to Mallard, between 3,000 and 5,000 postcards from consumers landed on various politicians’ desks across the country.

“This is a bottom-up, top-down strategy,” said Mallard. “Bottom up is the grassroots protest and the top down is the politicians sitting down with the regulators saying, ‘we’ve got to do it this way.'”

“[Politicians] are listening and they want to know what our issues are,” added Mallard. “And that was just 3,000 or 4,000 letters, imagine if they got 100,000 letters? That’s when change starts to happen.” A new electronic and written campaign, facilitated by Advocis members through their clients, is expected in the coming months.

Advocis also has what it calls “predatory regulation” in its sights, including an IDA rule clarified last September that allows firms to review their advisors’ financial plans before they are sent out to clients — and charge a fee for doing so. “We have to start getting [the IDA] to pay attention to what they should be doing and force the legislator to help build good fences around what [the IDA] is doing and not allow them to encroach in areas which are really revenue driven, that are self-serving and that do no good for the public,” said Mallard.

As part of its meeting agenda, Advocis also installed its national board of directors for 2004-2005. They are:

Randall (Randy) Reynolds (chair) Christy Bacik Ryan Beebe Kris Birchard Teresa Black Hughes Dennis Caponi, Sr. Leonard Colman Brian Mallard Roger McMillan Dave MacFadyen Gary McLeod Mike Palynchuk Timothy Squire

Filed by John Craig, john.craig@advisor.rogers.com.