Don’t miss your chance to win coveted Advisor of the Year Award

(June 10, 2003) Recognition and adulation from industry peers and clients alike could be yours if you are selected as a 2003 Advisor of the Year Award winner. But you’ll never know unless you get your case study entry in before this year’s June 27 deadline — read on for full details.

For the fourth year running, Advisor’s Edge invites the financial advisor community nationwide to submit real-life case studies that demonstrate the advisor’s prowess in dealing with one client’s financial situation.

All entries must be completely blinded — the only identifying information on the case study should be on the entry form that is included in your submission: do not include the entrant’s name, company and address information on the pages of the case study itself. The case study is then reviewed by a panel of industry experts. This year’s judges include two of last year’s winners Lance Howard and David Christianson, Montreal’s Claude Chauret of VMBL and Pierre Saint-Laurent of AssetCounsel, Carl Abbott of Abbott Financial in Kamloops, B.C., and Carolyn Williams of Financial Fitness in St. John’s, Nfld. Ultimately, one winner is chosen from each of five regions — Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies and B.C./Territories.

The winners of the award are profiled in Advisor’s Edge and Objectif Conseiller and online at Advisor.ca, and receive their award in a special ceremony at Advisor Forum when the conference comes to their region. Past winners have also found themselves featured in major daily newspapers across the country.

But there are more benefits to the AOTY title than just media exposure. “As a winner I can leverage the AOTY name. It carries weight for me, as an advisor,” says 2002 Ontario co-winner Lance Howard, of London’s Lance Howard Group, Cartier Partners. “I can tell you that we have reprinted our business cards and letterhead and put the AOTY logo on. There is real value in the program for advisors. Winning will definitely look good for consumers.”

Even if your submission does not capture the AOTY title for you, the process of participation itself can be valuable. “[Preparing a case study] helped us become more conscious of the process and the steps we had followed in this particular case, and the reason why we had been successful with this client,” says David Christianson, the 2002 AOTY winner for the Prairies region.

“We were also able to better quantify the value provided to the client, which helps our confidence level,” adds Christianson. “That improves our performance with prospects and existing clients both.”

Submissions for the 2003 AOTY Awards program must be post-marked no later than June 27, 2003 and should be sent to:

AOTY Awards Advisor’s Edge c/o Rogers Media Healthcare and Financial Services Group One Mount Pleasant Rd., 12th Floor Toronto, Ontario M4Y 2Y5

For more information on the AOTY Awards, visit the AOTY site. Along with a printable version of this year’s entry form, you will also find summaries of past winners’ case study submissions.

Filed by Steven Lamb, Advisor.ca, slamb@rmpublishing.com.

(06/10/03)